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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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I am looking (disrespectfully) at the trope of Bruce and other family members only seeming to respect Dick’s wishes when doing so aligns with what they already wanted to do.

Let’s go to the examples!

1) Bruce not broaching adoption with Dick because he wants to respect Dick’s first parents and feels like he would be taking their place or overstepping or putting himself in between Dick and his memories of his parents. Sometimes its cited that Dick himself expressed this wish early on after his parents died, sometimes its not and this is still just upheld as Bruce’s reasoning for not adopting Dick before he was already well into adulthood.

THE FATAL FLAW (in mine own personal opinion, natch. Personal mileage may vary, check your speedometer to be safe):

This particular plot point or tangle is in my experience ALWAYS paired with Bruce’s own insecurities about his role in Dick’s life, or not wanting to push that or receive an answer he doesn’t want to or is afraid to hear. Sometimes its about his fears of unworthiness to be Dick’s actual parent, etc, etc. But the bottom line is, there is always the presence of SOME element (and not a small one) in which Bruce’s own self-interest or feelings are protected by him NOT broaching the adoption conversation with Dick and having to confront these fears head on.

This is additionally juxtaposed with the problem that although there’s a lot of variance in regards to stories where Bruce fired Dick versus stories where Dick gave up being Robin and moved on to Nightwing voluntarily....there’s NOT a lot of stories where Dick makes Jason Robin himself or is asked by Bruce first. The part where Bruce takes this initiative on his own, without thinking through its repercussions on Dick emotionally.....this is practically always present.

Now, the problem here is that......Dick became or began becoming Robin well into his time with Bruce. Its frequently cited as the thing that began allowing them to truly connect, their time training and acting as Batman and Robin.

Meaning no matter WHAT interpretation you go with as to why specifically Dick chose the name Robin, whether it was a family nickname or an homage to Robin Hood.....the fact remains, NOTHING of Robin, THEMATICALLY, nothing that spoke to Dick in regards to what he wanted Robin to be - specifically in honor of his parents because avenging his parents and making sure what happened to them didn’t happen to others like, this was literally a key part of what bonded Dick and Bruce, the fact that Bruce was TRYING to help Dick specifically BECAUSE they shared this particular overlap of purpose - like the bottom line is, nothing about Robin CAME from Bruce. Or Dick’s feelings about Bruce. That....didn’t really even exist yet, at the time he created Robin. Everything about Robin, other than the physical costume itself, not even the design just the actual creation of it....all of that came from BEFORE he met Bruce. None of it was thoughts or feelings derived from BRUCE. Its the whole reason Dick was never Batkid or Batlad, or any derivative of Batman.

It all, ALL came from what Dick came to the manor WITH. Remnants of his life with his first family.

So the fatal flaw of Bruce’s reasoning that by not broaching the subject of adoption with Dick before well into adulthood, he was actually just respecting Dick’s relationship with his first parents and not trying to come between them and Dick’s memories and feelings about them....

All of this is inherently undermined by Bruce’s own actions.....when by repurposing Robin to ANY degree, even just to give the mantle to Jason.....this meant that he was inherently viewing Robin as being more about being Batman’s partner, HIS partner....then it was about being Dick’s heritage, his last intangible keepsake of his first family and life BEFORE Bruce.

In effect....Bruce making Jason Robin or firing Dick as Robin, either way....both betray Bruce’s OWN alleged intentions for only wanting to respect Dick’s relationship with his parents, and that being why he didn’t want to overstep by trying to impose or even ask for his own official parent/child relationship with Dick. Because that’s exactly what appropriating the Robin mantle was. It was Bruce ignoring the relationship Dick had with his parents and their memory and the fact that Robin was directly born of that....and making Robin entirely about Bruce’s OWN relationship with Dick, heedless of any other factors.

And the second Bruce did that.....his entire justification for not raising the adoption issue....disappears. It goes away. Because you can’t claim inaction being just a result of not wanting to disrespect something you’ve already voided respect for. No matter whether Bruce INTENDED it or not.....by crossing this boundary, Bruce already acted against Dick’s feelings in this regard and well, disregarded them....which makes claims of Bruce not raising the adoption issue pretty much JUST self-serving at that point. Its an alleged viewpoint of Dick’s that Bruce largely just ASSUMES....and only ultimately respects - in direct contrast to how he didn’t respect the associations Dick had with Robin - because it aligns with something Bruce ALREADY wanted to do, rather than what Dick actually wanted. It provided justification for Bruce to just....not have a conversation he was afraid to have. And that’s about Bruce at that point. Its not about Dick. Its just like...not.

2) Another example of this that is not unique to just Bruce, but recurs frequently in both canon and fanfics in Dick’s dynamics with other characters he’s close with.....is characters not apologizing for things they’ve done to Dick or raising the issue of things they did a long time ago but never apologized for....while claiming to do so because they thought DICK didn’t want to talk about it.

THE FATAL FLAW (in my own personal opinion. Nuances and variations may not be identical at all store locations, please see your local branch for details):

The particular problem I have here is that....Dick never ever ever in the history of ever and also the before ever time.....has EVER expressed a desire to avoid confrontation.

Like. That’s what he DOES. That’s his JAM. That’s literally CITED time and time again as one of the reasons he’s viewed as more of a people person and natural team leader than Bruce and other Batfam members....because he’s not afraid to cut straight (or bi) to the heart of the matter and air out a dispute.

In fact, this very character trait is one of the ones most commonly utilized AGAINST Dick in various depictions of him, as he’s often cited as TOO confrontational, TOO eager for a fight or conflict especially when his temper is engaged, such as when he’s well....personally hurt or offended.

So how does it follow, then, that avoiding tough conversations ONLY when its on the OTHER person to INITIATE, because they were the ones who DID the wrong-doing and Dick the subject of that rather than the instigator....how does it work, exactly, that these are the only times in which we DON’T tend to see a direct conversation about the harms done and the fallout that resulted? With it being claimed that this is solely for Dick’s benefit, out of a desire to avoid pulling him into an allegedly unnecessary (but really just unpleasant) confrontation?

When the concurrent reality is that whether stated or acknowledged or not.....avoiding these specific conversations and ONLY these conversations (as there never seems to be a problem finding canon or fanfic stories in which Dick apologizes for harm HE’S caused to others or is clearly expected to).....this avoidance also carries the side benefit of allowing the character who DID something wrong to Dick to....not ever have to have that super uncomfortable conversation in which they actually verbally acknowledge the thing they did to him and the effects it had on him, and apologize for that.....and then render themselves vulnerable to actually hearing whether or not he accepts their apology or is still upset with them regardless.

While - as long as they DON’T ever have this conversation, for whatever reason - they can look to the clear and consistent precedent of Dick continuing to work with people who have done things like oh, I don’t know....punched him in the face cuz they’re mad at him (and this isn’t a Bruce critical point, this is a whole damn family critical point as the only one who HASN’T actually done this is Duke. Well, Cass technically just threw him out a window, but I mean, tomato toh-mah-to). Writers and characters both can lean on the fact that actually Dick has a pretty clear track record of ultimately giving up a grudge or at least showing a willingness to look past those grudges enough that it doesn’t prevent him from still maintaining or resuming some kind of relationship with the person who hurt him.

And thus, like Example Numero Uno......this ultimately just lets other characters off the hook while claiming to do Dick a favor, but actually Dick receives no real benefit from it and instead now just has another instance of characters saying “see we respect your wishes” when ultimately their inaction is MORE in service to their own wishes and self-interests.

2b) See also the variation of this in which characters such as Bruce, Jason, Tim and assorted others like....are written specifically determining that they’re not going to apologize to Dick or beg his forgiveness because they feel they don’t DESERVE to be forgiven, and once again....its in HIS best interests that they not even give him the opportunity to say he forgives them....because they know Dick Grayson of course, and they know he’s too forgiving for his own good, so its better to like....not make it ever a possibility in this particular instance.

With the problem here being like.....Dick can’t and shouldn’t be expected to KNOW that’s their logic? So....all he’s going to actually SEE is loved ones just....not expressing remorse for hurting him or acknowledgment it even happened? Which....hurts?

So......hurting your loved one MORE after already hurting them....because you don’t feel you deserve to be forgiven for hurting them in the first place and are actually PROTECTING them from being hurt more when mistakenly forgiving you.....by.....hurting and continuing to hurt them with your silence and lack of evident remorse....

Mmmm.....

Its not the best approach, y’know?

Flaws are detected.

3) Dick’s friends and family manipulating situations in order to get the end result THEY desire, while claiming to do so for his benefit only. Dick being willing to manipulate people to achieve his own ends comes up a LOT actually....but there’s relatively little examination of how often people do this to him, claiming his best interests but really just circumventing his clearly stated desires for independence and the right to make his own choices about what HE needs....or when this is brought up, its usually limited to JUST Bruce doing it, but uh....no that ain’t it.

Specific examples of this are like when Wally joins the 1999 version of the Titans specifically to get Dick to join up, because in his estimation Dick needs more of a social life and is drowning himself with his responsibilities....and then quits not long after Dick is finally officially invested in staying with the team. Another example is when Roy gets Dick to join the Outsiders based entirely on his pitch of NOT treating the team like a family, like they did with the Titans, so that Dick could keep emotional distance and not be as worried about losing them like he suffered from losses like Donna....with his claim again being that he worried about Dick in the aftermath of that loss, etc.

And to be clear! Its not that I think Wally and Roy and others who do similar things have NEGATIVE intentions in mind for Dick. That’s the whole point of this post.....like the other examples, I fully believe THEY believe (or writers believe when writing them this way) that they have Dick’s best interests in mind and not their own. I just....disagree.

THE FATAL FLAW (at least as I see it here):

Is that I view this and Batfam members who do similar stuff as like.....falling into the trap of the savior friend complex. Its that thing when you see a friend hurting, and over time get FRUSTRATED by seeing this when a solution seems obvious to you but think they won’t take it because they’re too stubborn or don’t know what’s best for them....with this specifically recurring a LOT with Dick in particular, due to his core characterization of wanting to be the one to make his own choices. The problem here, same as the problem with the savior friend complex....is that it treats the subject of these views as like....incapable of determining what they need. Its a tacit condemnation that they actually don’t know how to cope with things and are doing it wrong - even though the ones making this assessment will never be the ones actually having to LIVE with the outcome of their meddling. Its the conviction that someone like Dick needs to be HANDLED, for his own good....because he can’t be trusted to KNOW what he needs, not as well as them at least.....and so they jump to manipulation rather than just....ASK him what he needs, or HOW they can best support him, or even just WHY he’s making the choices he is.

For instance, the problem with what Wally did was never that Dick wasn’t struggling. He was. He was drowning in his responsibilities, he had very little to no life outside of them.....Wally is not remotely in the wrong for WANTING to do something to change this situation. The problem is Wally basically defaulted to just...HANDLING his friend by restarting the Titans just to give Dick a social life again, which is pretty much a line straight out of the comics...and basically railroaded right over Dick’s initial ‘no’ when he first heard the proposal. And kept pushing things until Dick eventually joined up in order to get Wally to commit to the team too, because Wally spun it as though Dick was helping Wally by getting Wally to commit to the team for the very same reasons Wally wanted Dick to. And then....right after that, Wally quit to go back to just focusing on the Justice League, which was part of what Dick predicted would happen all along.

The thing was.....at no point along the way did Wally actually ask WHY Dick initially said no....he jumped straight to assuming his own view of the problem, that Dick just COULDN’T be made to ever see the reason to take a break occasionally and put his mental and emotional health as a priority. If he’d done this, Wally could have had dozens of other options to achieve his desired end result....he could’ve like....set up regular hangouts with Dick.

But Wally jumped to assuming he knew the answer, he knew what was best for Dick, and that Dick’s logic was inherently self-destructive and self-flagellating.....and he felt the solution was to bring back the Titans, as he recalled their earlier times as Titans together as a time when Dick was better able to balance his social life and responsibilities.

But by not ever stopping to LISTEN to why Dick felt the way he did and was initially opposed to rejoining the Titans....Wally overlooked one crucial fact: He isn’t Dick.

And more important, his view of the past wasn’t Dick’s view of the past.

Wally was a lot more capable of viewing the Titans as not just a family, but an inherent social life, a hangout, a kind of club....because that’s what it had always been to him.

But he’d never been the leader.

Throughout all their childhoods, the whole time the Titans WERE all of the above, and relatively light-hearted in comparison to their older selves....Dick STILL had the weight of responsibilities that none of the others had by virtue of just...not being the leader. Ultimately, all of their lives were in HIS hands. He was the one calling the shots. The buck stopped with him.

And this is precisely WHY Dick had gotten to the point he had in adulthood. It wasn’t because he’d changed. It wasn’t because he’d stopped figuring out what he needed and how to take care of himself. Its because the position he’d ALWAYS been in as leader....has WEIGHT. That eventually added up more and more and weighed him down. A huge part of the reason Dick had ended up leaving the Titans in the first place, before they disbanded prior to the 1999 revival....is because of the sheer WEIGHT of all the deaths and misfortunes that had befallen the Titans....and how much he and he alone struggled with it in ways the others didn’t....because they didn’t have to. It hadn’t been their plans, their calls, their RESPONSIBILITY to find a way the others could have all made it out alive or at least less traumatized.

So.....of COURSE Dick said no when Wally first proposed restarting the Titans, before Wally defaulted to using his own membership as a lure to get Dick to agree.....because......nothing about the above paragraph had changed, via Wally’s ‘plan.’ It wasn’t because Dick just didn’t KNOW how to be a fully rounded person....it was because nobody was helping him find actual OPTIONS for doing that....that didn’t just double as MORE responsibilities! Because that’s exactly what ended up happening! Dick wound up the leader of the Titans again, just as responsible and just as invested as always.....just like he always knew he would....and also as he knew would happen...Wally ended up quitting not long into it and persuading Jessie Quick to step in as his replacement....aka just one more person for Dick to worry about when it wasn’t like he was going to be worrying any less about Wally, just now he wasn’t going to have Wally there to even POTENTIALLY be able to support him when tragedy inevitably struck because they’re freaking superheroes....and instead he’d just have another person looking to him for the answers but with no reason or chance of being the support Dick could ACTUALLY use at times like that!

Wally’s manipulations circumvented Dick’s opinion that no, actually he knew what was best for him and it wasn’t what Wally was suggesting....without actually accounting for the fact that hey, Dick might actually know that. And in the end, Wally got the result he was after, he got to feel that he’d HELPED his friend....which again, this isn’t WRONG to WANT to....but Dick didn’t...exactly....benefit from this. It wasn’t actually in his best interests ultimately.

I mean...see Donna’s death for details.

And in the aftermath of THAT....Roy essentially did exactly what Wally did....just in REVERSE! Roy got Dick to agree to lead the Outsiders, to shoulder responsibility once again....by promising that Dick WOULDN’T have to view them as family. And did Dick go too far and end up TOO uncaring about their welfare? Yup! No disagreements there! Problem is though....he only ended UP in that situation because yet again a friend thought they KNEW the solution to what Dick needed.....only for Dick to end up essentially punished and further self-blaming....just for doing exactly what Roy had told him TO do, with this particular team. Again - Roy hadn’t EXPECTED Dick to take it this far. But that’s the whole point! Roy had expectations about what Dick would ACTUALLY end up doing, that didn’t match up to the pitch Roy actually gave Dick to GET his agreement.....because Roy all along was of the assumption that by virtue of being Dick Grayson, he wouldn’t be ABLE to avoid connecting with these new teammates and viewing them as family, and thus he’d end up ‘snapping out of it’ with it being the funk he’d been in since Donna’s death.

Roy’s intentions might have been noble, once again.....but his methods stuck to the same pattern of people around Dick believing they knew what he needed or knew who he was or knew what it meant to BE Dick Grayson....better than Dick actually did...particularly when Dick said no, this isn’t what I need or this isn’t a good idea or just...I don’t want to do this.

And in the end....its Dick who ended up paying the price for it, as well as the people who got hurt because of his INTENTIONAL emotional distance.....because the ‘view all surrounding people as new surrogate family’ aspect of the Dick Grayson Experience hadn’t kicked in as Roy thought inevitably would....but the ‘view all this as directly my fault and suffer guilt for it forevermore’ aspect of the Dick Grayson Experience most certainly did! Not at all actually helped along by the fact that like....Roy also expressed frustration with Dick that like.....Dick hadn’t actually responded to Roy’s intended manipulation of his emotions the way Roy had expected him to when he EXPRESSLY TOLD DICK TO BEHAVE THE WAY THAT DICK ULTIMATELY BEHAVED. (Just, he didn’t tell Dick to dial that all the way up to Extra, but given that’s the only setting Dick does ANYTHING at, I feel its a possible outcome Roy should have at least considered. I mean, wasn’t the whole point that you know Dick Grayson better than he knows himself?)

But lo, I am salty.

LMAO, but I mean, you get it right? Obviously, I LIKE Wally and Roy. I LIKE Jason, etc. I’m not saying all of this to be like ugh how dare these characters do all this to Dick....I’m saying it because like.....they all keep falling into the same patterns of making a big fuss and acknowledgment of how much Dick prioritizes being able and free to make his own choices and decide what’s best for him and what HE wants.....

But without ever like....actively asking him AT THE RELEVANT TIME....what he thinks and feels about all this. What he thinks and feels he needs. What he ACTUALLY wants from them, or why he’s ACTUALLY saying no to something and maybe it being for reasons that aren’t just him inherently being stubborn and self-destructive.

And instead just defaulting to falling back on whatever he might have said or expressed in an entirely different context at an entirely different time.....and saying okay, by doing so, we are abiding by his wishes and thus doing what he wants and respecting his right to make his own choices.....

But ONLY when doing all of the above just so happens to align with these other characters then getting to do the thing or take the approach they’re already predisposed towards wanting to take because of their OWN self-interests at the same time.

With this never actually coming into play when respecting Dick’s wishes aligns with them taking actions they DON’T personally want to undertake, because it makes them uncomfy or they think its a bad call, even if it is something that should be his call to make.

Like....the pattern. It very much exists. And abounds. Like I could cite examples allllllllllll the way up to Ric Grayson, where Bruce respected RIC’S wishes to be left alone and not interfere in his life no matter what.....in ways Bruce almost never respects Dick’s actual expressed wish for Bruce to butt out of matters when Bruce is actually quite keen on meddling and would very much like to....

But notice how the other thing about the Ric Grayson storyline is that Ric’s expressed desire to stay the fuck out of vigilantism and superhero work, like.....just so happens to align with Bruce’s longstanding desire for Dick to like...get out of the vigilantism and superhero work? With butting out of Ric’s life and respecting his privacy in ways Dick has to FIGHT him for, like......absolutely the optimal action to take in order to allow this expressed desire of Ric’s to flourish in the ways Bruce always wished would kick in for Dick?

.....just saying.

The pattern. It abounds.

And the key to breaking any pattern, of course, is to first recognize....and acknowledge....that it exists.

Otherwise you tend to fall into the trap of repeating and perpetuating it over and over without even realizing it, simply because its what’s familiar.

This has been A Post by Me. Thank you and have a nice day. Or don’t. Idk. I’m not the boss of you. Whatever.

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hellsbellschime · 3 years

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I always love your takes on Dany because I think you explain her really well and was wondering what you think of this take by a Dany stan. It's got some uh... interesting ideas. Sorry too because it's quite long

The main difference in between Daenerys' political arc, and that of other "heroes" and their Houses is that Dany's is not currently a political arc relegated to fighting for Targaryen grievances and wins. Meanwhile, all other main House representatives in the narrative (Starks, Martells, Lannisters, Greyjoys, Tullys, Tyrells, Baratheons) are generally fighting precisely for nothing else but their own (and their Houses') grievances and wins.

That's where the double standards come in-

+ Daenerys is harshly and minutely judged for the quality of her every act, upon every single person in her narrative, bc her arc involves her aim to hold responsibility over the wellness of all these people.

+ Everyone else who are part of the Great Houses however are merely judged as per how they perform towards the wellness of their own Houses, because that's all they aim to perform for.

One girl dies in an act Dany is not directly involved in, particularly in intention, and the discussions are endless as per the repercussions and outrage of the occurrence. Because Daenerys took it upon herself to defend all these people, and this seems like a failure, particularlyin her POV: one girl with no other importance in the story and a few lines, among maybe millions. One girl. Hazea.

Robb Stark and his men, on the other hand, will kill, maim and rape thousands, or even tens of unnamed thousands, and there is no outrage; rarely discussed repercussions. Because Robb's political arc is not about protecting nameless people. Not about caring for the fate of one-liner non-noble characters. His arc is about the grievances of House Stark. About Ned. Readers judge him upon how close he gets to getting revenge on Tywin and Jofrrey, about how well/or bad he leads wars, not about what kind of leader he is to people, what kind of 'monster' he is to enemy commonfolk. The relevance of his eventual loss is not about the fate of his people, or enemy people, either. It's about his personal tragedy. It's about the tragedy of the remaining Starks.

There is outrage for Daenerys even killing her (leader) enemies. For everyone else, it's an undisputed aim.

Daenerys is even already judged for the possibility of a future where she will anything that concerns her actually being Daenerys of House Targaryen in Westeros. The possibility that any Westerosi people might die, while hundreds of thousands may have been dying so far at the hands of other Great Houses (directly and indirectly), and it's mostly irrelevant for them. But for Daenerys that judgement is everything. She is looked through the lense of "if she's a Queen she's meant to protect them, not kill them" tho she has not yet been granted that status, while those who have had the status of Kings, Queens and Lords of Westeros in the meantime have been responsible for the deaths of their own people all of this time.

No noble Northener really cares for a Jeyne Poole, least of all for a Hazea.

Daenerys alone is (harshly) judged as a leader of people, because that's her current actual arc. She is not Daenerys of House Targaryen currently, in a real sense, not really. Her family and House don't really matter where she is now, and to what she is doing.

Almost every other noble character (and I only say almost to partly exclude those not taking particular part in politics) is given the leniency of the tragic MC in a tragic family drama biopic. ALL THEY ARE IS X PERSON OF HOUSE Y. And in most cases nothing else matter. - end post

Well, obviously no hate to this person whoever they are and I don't necessarily think it's a bad take just because I disagree with it. I particularly DO agree on things like Jeyne Poole, and I think that is GRRM very intentionally trying to point out some huge hypocrisies with everyone in the story, even the "good guys", because it is incredibly unfair that no one will come to save Jeyne Poole while a fuckton of people will come to save "Arya Stark" just because they cared about Ned.

But where I don't agree is on that aspect in particular. Because it's not about winning or airing grievances for these great houses, a lot of their actions are largely driven by the fact that they simply care deeply about the other people who are involved in the war now or who have been hurt or killed in the past wars, and that is largely what is motivating many of them to do what they do. And in even more intense cases, they're going to war because they are in extremely immediate danger.

This is true for both villains and heroes, I mean Robb and Cat go to war against the Lannisters because there is an immediately mortal threat to their entire family, and even though Cersei and the rest of the Lannisters are clearly villains, their actions are also driven by an immediate mortal danger that their family is facing. And it's safe to say, a huge portion of what happened in the WOT5K would never have even occurred if a lot of these people weren't put in a position of "HOLY SHIT me or someone I love is about to die RIGHT NOW if I don't do something so I better fucking do something".

I feel like the story makes it clear that the wars that they are fighting are very pointless and brutal anyway. I mean FFS, GRRM does not accidentally traumatize the shit out of Arya by putting her in a commoner's position in a war that is supposedly being fought in her name. So I actually agree with the writer in the sense that there is a double standard when it comes to Dany vs. everyone else, but I feel like the double standard is valid because all of these characters for better or worse have a dog in this fight. Whatever they've done is incredibly personal and therefore pretty irrational for them.

And the fact that the men are rallying to save Arya Stark when they wouldn't rally to save a thousand Jeyne Pooles is very telling and demonstrates that they are extremely hypocritical, but it's also telling because they're not fighting for the "heir to House Stark". They repeatedly talk about how they're fighting for Ned's girl. It has very little to do with her nobility and power and a great deal to do with how these people feel about Ned not as a Stark, but just as a person that they knew and cared for who was horribly wronged.

So while I agree and recognize that a ton of the main characters have done the wrong things, often for the wrong reasons, it's personal, it's emotional, and it's irrational. And in a lot of cases it is driven by something as simple and pure as "I am about to die if I don't do something so I'm doing the first thing I fucking think of to get out of it". Even for the houses who initially got involved as a power play, it has become very much about the people that they care about and their own feelings rather than strategy and house advancement.

That doesn't magically make it moral, but it does make it hugely distinct from what Daenerys is doing. Because Daenerys doesn't have a dog in this fight at all. She has absolutely no personal ties to Westeros or anyone in it, and she is not in any danger from anyone in Westeros. Literally the only Westerosi person who has ever even really tried to kill her is a man she doesn't know and is already dead, and the only Targaryen she ever knew who even had a connection to Westeros was someone she hated who abused her horrifically and who is also already dead.

Ergo, Dany is a villain because she literally has no personal or political justification for the massive war that she's going to bring to Westeros. She is going to leave the place she's in that is a complete mess and desperately needs help even more than it did after her intervention, and she's going to invade a place that she doesn't care about beyond some imaginary concept she has about it in her head, has no connection to, has no need for her, and poses no threat to her.

She's not fighting for anything besides herself and her own sense of entitlement over Westeros. She's more harshly judged for her actions because they are completely driven by her own whims and desires and nothing more. She has the opportunity to think things through and plan and get advice and actually figure out the best way to do things, whereas every character in Westeros is reacting to something very immediate that they don't have a lot of time to consider and that is deeply emotional for them. But still, she doesn't even do that.

She's judged for all of the mistakes she makes because they're unnecessary and foreseeable mistakes. And, if she actually just waited and tried to figure out what to do instead of basically throwing herself into situations where she's suddenly overthrowing governments and ruling hundreds of thousands of people without a plan or any governing experience, then a lot of the bad things that have happened as a result of her campaign wouldn't have happened.

And obviously, I think this is a very intentional move on GRRM's part. I think he establishes that war is pointless and often outrageously hypocritical with the WOT5K, but there's a reason he gave Dany no one she loves and no one who needs her help and no one who poses a threat to her in Westeros. She's going to bring war to an already war-ravaged continent simply because she feels like it should belong to her.

That is drastically different than Robb going to war because his father has been falsely charged with treason or Cersei murdering Robert because he will try to murder her children if he finds out they're not his. And while all of the wars in ASOIAF are terrible and purposeless in the end, GRRM is going very far out of his way to demonstrate that Dany has literally zero justification or even explanation for why she acts the way she does beyond her belief in her own super-special entitlement.

#asoiaf #anti daenerys targaryen #anti daenerys targaryen meta #asoiaf meta

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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Didn’t Need Burrow (August 7th-September 13th)

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Ladybug and Chat Noir will be asked to participate in judging a competition that Marinette and Adrien are both a part of. Ladybug will want to vote for herself as Marinette, but Tikki will tell her(once detransformed and while she is snacking) that she can’t because then people will know that Marinette is Ladybug. Chat Noir, meanwhile, will freely vote for Adrien with no repercussions or drawbacks, and Adrien will end up winning the competition. Marinette will admit that she was “so silly” to even think of voting for herself, especially since “Adrien needs the award more so that I do” despite being rich, white, male, and “perfect”(oh, I’m sorry, “purrfect”!), since all of Marinette’s legitimate problems of anxiety, dyspraxia, and the like get thrown out the window because the writers’ perfect sunshine boy incel stand-in has a “saaad home life!”, and Marinette needs to give him pity and put his feelings above his rather than wish for her own success. Cuz Girl Power.

tbh, given the leaks script, I’d reverse that and saying that Adrien voted for LadyNoir as Couple of the Year.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Marinette and Adrien will reveal their identities, and Marinette actually WILL be disappointed that the boy who goofed off in fights and didn’t take no for an answer is none other than her perfect modeling celebrity crush. However, rather than this being a point towards Adrien needing to learn how to improve himself and accept Marinette’s feelings, this scene is used to make HER look bad(because of course it is) and she is blamed for expecting Adrien to be perfect(despite being encouraged and told to see him as such), and told that she should be happy that Chat was hitting on her even when she didn’t like it or it got in the way of battle plans, likely by Alya, because it was her true love under the mask all along. Eventually she “learns her lesson”(ick) and comes to accept Adrichat for who he is, warts and all. Bonus if she has a flashback to when Chat said “if you saw me without my mask you wouldn’t be able to resist me” as she realizes that he was right.

Didn’t Need Burrow? More like “Didn’t Need to Think About This”

i hate it

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Luka will be Chat Blanc "2.0"

But Luka doesn’t have Chat-level favoritism going so Bunnyx won’t be there to defend him from consequences.

Anonymous asked:

We will have Ladybug!Alya in Marinette's akumatization episode. Obviously everyone would think that she is "better" than "old" Ladybug. (Bonus points if Ladybug!Alya don't "alienate" Chat Noir, mostly by catering to his whims)

Oh, of course! No one will miss the “old” Ladybug.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Bob Roth is akumatized into Rip Off, a supervillain with power to copy anything he sees (including powers of heroes)

Okay but that’s genius.

(I know we already had it in “Miraculer” but I like this more.)

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Now that Luka knows their identities, he will push the Love Square in a romantic manner. Stans would be totally fine with this because it doesn't interfere with their endgame :)

Well, obviously!

I’m just waiting for them to basically say that the secret identities don’t matter and, because they like one side, also means they like the other side.

Because forget nuance, am I right?

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: In the end, (after Adrienette gets together) Narrator reveals himself (herself?) as Alya with words "that's how I helped my bestie [Marinette] get a relationship with love of her life [Adrien]" or something similar.

wait, Alya, are you filming a Ladybug biography

why did you include all the humilation

why

That explains her making herself look good though.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Luka will finally reveal that he knows Heroes' secret identities... to Alya, who obviously decide to hide from Marinette that Luka knows her identity (Bonus Points if reason provided by Alya why she is doing this is utterly ridiculous)

AAAAAAAAAAAA

I guess Luka would have to realize that Alya knows. Bonus if he tells her Chat’s identity too so love square shipping can commence.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: "Knitting Fairy" will be name of Marinette's akumatized form.

Can you say “reused design”? I certainly can, we’re used to it.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow:

Luka keeping his knowledge about the identities (esp. Ladybug’s) will somehow blow up in a way for the writers to paint him in a bad light, probably ending with Marinette not trusting him. (As well as no hint of irony that Adrien did the same thing for completely selfish reasons in Chat Blanc).

MiraculousMX: Platonic soulmates!

us: Source??

Anonymous asked:

DNB: If LS gets reversed, Adrien complains about Marinette having other friends. Not just being friends with Luka or any other guys, but friends PERIOD, showing the same jealousy/desire for his 'love interest' to be isolated as Chat Noir. These MASSIVE RED FLAGS are treated as Just More Innocent Sadrien Things, because he's sOoOoOo Sad and SoOoOoO Lonely~

Oh god, now I had an awful thought that this is where Adrien getting jealous of Luka, and Luka feels bad/”knows what’s best” so he either ditches Marinette/finds an excuse to leave or makes sure that Adrien gets his time with her.

Because it’s the love square so it’s “important” that Marinette spend time with Adrien.

Anonymous asked:

Dnb: assuming the Senti-Adrien theory is true, in the season finale, Viperion joins the fight, stops SM from using the ladybug an cat miraculi by going back in time only to use them by himself, wishing for Adrien to be a real boy (and love Marinette). Of course Luka needs to give something in exchange, worst case scenario, his life.

That got really dark.

Though tbh with how much they push Luka and Marinette around, one of them will probably have to give up something huge for Adrien (they both already sacrificed their relationship, so--).

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: If Chat Noir joins Shadow Moth then he is treated by both Gabriel and Heroes as his greatest asset, even through he is still complete joke that is defeated by rest of Heroes faster than Mr Pigeon in "Timetagger". (Bonus points if Heroes defeat him by "Backhand Offhand", Offscreen or he is defeated by "Friendly Fire" from Akuma of the Week due to his own stupidity)

tbh I could probably do more sad math with “how often Chat Noir/Cataclysm is useless,” bonus if it’s put up against characters/Ladybug stroking his ego.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Adrien's fears concerning Ladybug are made more explicit through a nightmare/vision (possibly akuma-induced) of Ladybug calling him unreliable/saying she doesn't need him anymore because she has partners she can actually COUNT on. Naturally, this is treated as Pure Sadrien Hours rather than a fair critique. Bonus if he ditches/forces her to beg for his assistance AGAIN to soothe his poor bruised baby ego.

*“Malediktator” flashbacks, but Adrien instead of Chloe*

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: Adrien/Chat Noir skips out on a fight/akuma attack for some spiteful, selfish reason or another. Ladybug handles it without him, either completely through her own skill or with help from Rena/other heroes. Adrien then angsts about 'not being needed', with Marinette's 'Mistake of the Day' being that she didn't cater to his pity party due to being too busy DOING HER DAMNED JOB.

me seeing that one leaked script where they talk about how Chat/Cataclysm would make things easier: *sigh*

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: Plagg will encourage Adrien to act even more selfishly, skipping more battles and being even brattier. This is so his stans can blame Plagg for being 'a bad influence' on their perfect angel, even when it's clear the two of them are on the same wavelength. Oooh, he's twisting his rubber arm; how AWFUL--! Adrien would NEVER do all these Awful Things he's already done if he didn't have Plagg~! What a bad kitty~!

“rubber arm” jdfkgjndfjgfg

tbh Plagg already is super laidback and doesn’t really like transforming/complains about going into battle, so this isn’t much of a stretch.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: "Gabriel Agreste" or other episodes will reveal that Gabriel flew many, if not ALL of the same Red Flags his son displays on a regular basis. The narrative treats this as though this makes Gabriel more 'sweet, sad and sympathetic' rather than illustrating that both of them are dangerously entitled and generally awful.

This sounded really intriguing as a sort of “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” thing until that last sentence kicked in.

That’s damn accurate to what they’d do too, ugh.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Plagg is the one that discovers that Gabriel is Hawk/Shadowmoth, but is forcibly sworn to silence by Adrien. Bonus if Adrien somehow gives this command without learning what Plagg is trying to tell him -- i.e. he get irritated and orders Plagg to shut up in a way that bars him from EVER saying what he was attempting to say -- so that Adrien's stans can claim it was all a big misunderstanding and blame Plagg entirely for it. Or Marinette. Somehow.

Oh oh oh!

Alternatively, Adrien silences Plagg without realizing that he has that kind of power (like saying, “you can’t tell anyone!” and we see the magic hit Plagg’s mouth), so the fandom can say, “HE DOESN’T KNOOOW THAT HE DID IT.”

Anonymous asked:

dntb: Luka is gonna be villianised in some way for not telling Marinette he knows the identities of both of them

Meanwhile, Alya, slipping the bouncer her free pass.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: After one of the kwamis makes one snickering comment too many, Marinette snaps and tells them all to shut up (with obvious outcome). Narrative obviously equals it to scene between Gabriel and Noroo from "Sandboy" (Bonus Points if Narrative deems Marinette worse than Gabriel, because "Gabriel forbid Noroo from talking as joke")

oh my goooooood

Marinette: *snaps because she’s stressed out*

the fandom: SHE SO MEAN!!! ;o;

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Adrien's reveal as Sentimonster just for additional souce of "sad points" for him

this DNB: i am inevitable

mystic-lionroar asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: The writers' Status-Quo allergy kicks in when someone very pointedly implies Chloe, Lila and/or Gabriel work for Hawk Moth with how many Akumas they tend to cause... only to get reminded point blank that "Hawk Moth is the sole one responsible for this mess, no one else". Cue two episodes later, both the characters and the writers' memories of this scene are erased. What erased it? ╰( ･ ᗜ ･ )╯Why, Marinette can be held responsible for this one, of course! (Me: (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻)

╰（‵□′）╯

OH MY GOOOOD

“Crocoduel” also basically already blamed Marinette for two akumatizations so at this point we’re just waiting.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: To further cement the whole 'destined to be' shlock, after the shock of the eventual reveal wears off, we get a call back to how frequently Chat Noir told Ladybug that they were meant for each other and that she 'was the only one who didn't see it'. Marinette agrees that she was silly and foolish for not recognizing it sooner, parroting Adrien's bullshit in order to further cement the notion that she's HAPPILY accepting her 'fate' to be nothing more than his personal prize.

You can’t see it but I have my head in my hands in grief.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Adrien's gross sense of entitlement towards Ladybug will become even more explicit, with him angrily ranting about how he DESERVES to 'get the girl'. No matter how awful and nasty he gets, the narrative continues to treat him as though he's 100% right to be pissed off at her for DARING to have agency or thinking she has a say in things. As clearly, the biggest mistake Marinette has ever made is thinking she gets to have Opinions or make her own decisions. G-girl power...?

Marinette needing to be constantly told what’s best for her by other people and it’s okay because she needs to accept+follow all opinions.

end me

Anonymous asked:

DNB: The double standard between Adrien and other characters will be more noticeable. Adrien will still be put on a pedestal.

Because no one will notice Adrien if they didn’t put him on a metaphorical and physical pedastal.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Foxy Cat and CaraBug

omg Fox Adrien.is one of the worst hero choices I’ve ever heard fjdgjfjdglfkdg

I could at least see why Marinette thought that Adrien fit the snake since the narrative gushes for him so hard.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: As a result of being written by a straight white male writing team, the show starts to use Marinette’s girliness against her. From her love of pink being mocked to the kwamis admitting(in the spirit of another DNB) that they don’t respect Marinette because she’s “too girly”, to her fashion designing being treated as a cutesy but ultimately fickle pastime(in the spirit that all teenage girls’ interests are treated), the show absolutely throws Girl Power out the window in favor of giving Marinette absolute hell for daring to present herself in a traditionally feminine way, treating her femininity as the butt of a joke that no one is laughing at. Bonus points of someone says(or even outright tells her to her face) that she’s “such a girl”, as if that’s supposed to be an insult. Alternatively, this happens to Rose instead of Marinette, as she’s just as girly if not more so than her, or it happens to both of them(regardless of whether or not it’s at the same time).

WOOOOW

I mean, honestly, yeah.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Things other characters did that were bad will be retconned into things that Marinette did instead, or will otherwise be retconned into being her fault, no matter how improbable or contradictory. Meanwhile, bad things characters did to Marinette or good things characters did FOR Marinette will be retconned into nonexistence.

I MEAN THEY BLAMED MARINETTE FOR “SILENCER” SO--

MATTER OF TIME.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Simultaneous Akumatization of Manon, Chris, Ella and Etta, obviously when they are babysat by Marinette, because otherwise ML Writers wouldn't be able to paint it as Marinette's fault

oh god

please no

I mean, not even just to blame Marinette for it, but I can’t even stand these kids when they’re on their own, MUCH LESS TOGETHER.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: If Adrien gets akumatized, then it would be just Chat Blanc with shoulder pads and crown

Is this a reference to my Miracle Queen post?

Because yes.

Anonymous asked:

Didn't need burrow: In Hack-San Chat Noir will pull a Sentibubler and refuse to listen to Alya with the Ladybug Miraculous as he doesn't have a brain unless he can progress the not so progressive four-sided Hellfire, which is actually still the best-case-scenario. I mean he could just not come at all, since he's only there to flirt with and seduce Ladybug with unfunny jokes.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Adrien causes problems because of Alyabug.

ugggggh

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Alya will immediately have access to things like the creation of charms despite how long it took for Marinette to be able to do that.

Wait--

If she doesn’t, did they literally just give Alya the ladybug miraculous because they knew that Markov wouldn’t have a way of hiding the amulet on him and they didn’t feel like putting it on his model???

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Alya’s Ladybug name is “Coccinelle” aka “Ladybug” in French. Or something equally lazy such as The Red Spotted One or the Scarlett Beetle. Even if it sounds cool at first glance, it will ultimately boil down to a plain and obvious name, because apparently EVERY superhero’s name has to so blatantly relate to the animal their Miraculous is based off of. For some reason. Somehow. -_-

fhkgjfdkgdfg okay but “The Red Spotted One” made me laugh.

Anonymous asked:

Hack-San DNB’s:

• Chat Noir will be upset that Ladybug trusted her miraculous to someone else.

• There will be a comment on how Alya was a just as good, if not better Ladybug than Marinette.

• Alya’s performance as LB will be used as another instance to show Marinette made the ‘right choice’ telling her her identity.

• Using the Horse to teleport back instead giving the earrings to Alya will not be mentioned as an option.

• Scene of Adrichat being sad about ‘feeling replaced’.

Especially on that “comment that Alya is just as good, if not better,” one, it probably won’t even be used as a reassurance for Marinette like, “oh, that’s good to know that I’m not the only one who can be Ladybug,” it’ll just be praise for Alya.

Anonymous asked:

Hack-San DNB: Chat Noir gets angry with LB for not telling him she was leaving & she has to apologize for it.

(Despite making sure there was a backup Ladybug to protect Paris, unlike Chat in the NY special who left the city completely unprotected).

Convenient.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: "Dearest Family" (episode where both of Marinette's parents are akumatized) will be about Marinette learning "true value" of Chat Noir

Either that or incorporating Adrien into the family.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Psycomedian will be blatant Joker rip-off

You can just say “all akuma in the season will either be rip-offs of themselves or past akuma,” it’s okay. :P

Anonymous asked:

Another DNB for Hack-San, since we see Jagged Stone in the trailer, so if they show it..:

The “most precious possession” of Jagged’s will be Fang and not, y’know, either of his children.

I missed that trailer.

Honestly there could be some funny moments with the concept, but if Jagged is the only joke made about it then yes, I will be very bitter.

Alternatively, Jagged picks his guitar instead.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: In the Alyabug episode, Alya will either be Practically Perfect In Every Way™, or will royally screw up in a way that will somehow lead to Marinette. Either way, Cat Noir will flirt with the new Ladybug, or pull a Sentibubbler. Or both. There may or may not be a comment about how Alyabug's costume is so much better than Marinette's despite being a fashion designer.

dkfgkjdfgjf I adore how this whole thing is just, “there’s so many ways it could go wrong!”

#category: salt #Didn't Need Burrow #other: ask and answer

53 notes · View notes

mochegato · 3 years

Text

Capturing a Dream

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 - First Mission

She was late. She was late. She was sooooooooo late. Stupid last minute fabric misorder that caused a backup in production, which left everyone scrambling and rushing to figure out a solution. Bright side, they figured out a solution that was better than the original and Marinette was a huge part of it, gaining her accolades from her supervisor and the director of design. Down side, Chimera was now extremely late for the mission briefing. Her first mission briefing. She would be lucky if she made it there before it was over.

Marinette ducked into an alley close to the zeta tube and transformed. She grimaced as she stood in front of the opening. There was no way to make this discrete. It was going to announce her lateness for everyone to hear. She couldn’t portal in just to avoid embarrassment because that was considered “personal use” and she didn’t know how much time they would have before they had to leave so she couldn’t take the chance that she would have to detransform, feed Kaalki, then retransform. So she was just going to have to deal with the extreme embarrassment. She took a deep breath and walked through the opening.

“Recognize Chimera B12”

Chimera let out a deep sigh. Yeah, there was no way they didn’t hear that. She looked at the Team and noted their expressions. Not as bad as she had been expecting, but she still felt terrible. She rushed over to the Team, standing behind everyone and trying to give Batman’s image on the screen her full attention.

When Batman paused to pull up a schematic of the area they were focusing on, Superboy leaned over to her. “You’re late.” He said in a quietly gruff voice.

She looked up and scowled at him. “I’m aware,” she hissed back. “Couldn’t get away.”

“Right. It’s not like we’re doing anything important here.” He sniped quietly.

“I know we are. But my personal life is important too. If I don’t keep my… outside deal happy, I don’t stay here. I get sent home and I am no longer on the Team.” He furrowed his brow in surprise. She frowned at him, feeling guilty for not being faster and looked back toward Batman. “It’s a balancing act. A balancing act I’m clearly failing at. Sorry.”

He watched her for a few more seconds before returning his attention to Batman as well. “Sorry,” he grumbled out of the corner of his mouth.

“Now that Chimera has arrived, I’ll review roles. Aqualad, Artemis, Kid Flash, Robin, and Superboy, you will all be on tracking duty. You will work together on the ground to track the subject.” They nodded at him.

“Chimera, you will be on distance reconnaissance, observing the team from a distance. I don’t want you interacting unless necessary. Nobody knows about you yet and I want to keep it that way. I want you calling out positions when needed and using mirage if necessary.” She nodded at him. “When you find him, report in, and I’ll recover him. DO NOT ENGAGE. If at any point you need assistance, CALL IT IN. Don’t try to prove yourselves by doing it on your own. Everyone needs help sometimes. Make sure you are reporting your movements.” His voice made clear there was no room for argument or leeway in his statement. He stared at each of them to make sure they all understood how serious he was. “You leave in 5.”

The ride to the site was shorter than Chimera expected. As soon as they landed, they tested out their coms and moved off the ship. Aqualad and Superboy led the way off the ship. Artemis and Chimera followed behind, with Kid Flash and Robin bringing up the rear. After a few seconds they heard Kid Flash over the coms “What do you think I need to do to get Aqualad to pair me up with Chimera on the next mission? I’d kill for some alone time with her.”

Everyone froze immediately. Kid Flash’s eyes went wide in embarrassment looking at each of them as they reacted. Aqualad shot him an exasperated look. Superboy stared daggers at him. Robin chuckled and moved away from him, leaving him to deal with the repercussions on his own. Chimera stared straight ahead, her eyes wide in shock. Artemis continued looking straight ahead as well, but instead of staring at nothing like Chimera, she stared at Superboy. “If he gets alone time with you, I get alone time with Superboy.” She grinned at him when he gave her a confused look.

Chimera groaned and let out a frustrated breath. "Are you guys kidding me?” She exclaimed loudly looking at them. “It’s like Felix all over again. Can we focus on the mission, please?"

Robin stopped walking and turned back to her. "Felix?"

Chimera’s eyes bugged out for a second chastising herself for giving away that clue to her identity, before her face went slack. She turned away from the group and started walking away. "How about we agree whatever personal information we find out about one another during a mission we ignore? Now let's track this guy down. I’m moving to my position." The rest of the Team looked at each other and nodded. They would table that conversation until later. Right now, they needed to focus on the mission. Once Chimera was in her position, they’d move to their own positions.

After about 5 minutes Chimera still hadn’t checked in. The Team gave each other anxious looks. They were ready to get moving and didn’t appreciate having to wait to move. “Chimera, are you in position?” Aqualad asked through the coms.

There was a full 20 second pause before her response came. “Having a bit of trouble getting into position. I’ve come across a problem.” She grunted.

“If you are lost, you should be able to follow the map on your flute. Get in position. We can’t start until you are.” Aqualad chastised her.

They heard a few noises coming from Chimera’s com but no response to Aqualad’s question. “Chimera! Stand down and get in position.”

“Your first mission and already disobeying orders?” Artemis snorted. “Damn, I’m not even that cocky.”

Chimera’s com finally crackled to life again. “To be clear, you want me to stop fighting the guy that jumped me and is currently trying to kill me?”

“There’s a guy attacking you?” Robin whipped around toward the direction he thought she was in.

“You thought I was making these noises for fun?” She huffed at him.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Superboy demanded starting to run towards her position.

“I’m just getting my breath back. He caught me by surprise and got in a lucky hit.” She grumbled.

“Who is it?” Aqualad asked sternly moving toward her as well, but slower than Superboy.

“I’m not sure. Hey scary looking guy trying to kill me, my teammates want to know your name… uh huh. Really? I would have thought… I mean, not to criticize,” she grunted a few times as she jumped away from him or struck him, “but isn’t that a little… You know what, I really don’t have the right to critique names as being too on the nose. He says his name is Killer Croc.” She paused for a few seconds giving a grunt before speaking again. “He says to say hi.” She said slightly strained.

“Damn it.” Robin cursed.

“We’re on our way.” Aqualad assured her and nodded to the Team to start moving.

“Here already.” Kid Flash reported. “He’s not even part of the mission! How did you find him?” He asked incredulously.

“I didn’t go looking for him! I’m just lucky apparently.” She chuckled out wryly. “Look out, Kid Flash!”

“I’m almost there.” Superboy called to her.

“Take your time. We’re just getting to know each other. He said he wants to have fun with me later.” Chimera commented with a fake casualness.

“I think your definitions of fun might not match.” Robin remarked drolly.

“Only one way to find out.” She shrugged.

“We’re super excited you’ve decided to come out from the sewers. We’re looking forward to chatting with you.” Kid Flash added coldly, running to hit him. Killer Croc turned just out of his reach and caught him with his tail instead, sending Kid Flash flying down the street.

“Kid Flash!” Chimera yelled moving toward him.

“I’ll be there in about 20 seconds.” Superboy stated.

Chimera nodded even though none of her team could see it and turned back to Killer Croc. “I’ll have him ready for you.” She whispered to her coms. “Hey evil killer guy, I heard you were difficult. You’re really embarrassing yourself here. I expected better.” She loudly taunted Killer Croc.

“What are you doing?” Superboy yelled into the coms.

They could hear Killer Croc growling at Chimera before she whispered, “Mirage…” but nothing around her seemed to have changed. Slightly louder she said, “Superboy, expect him from above you in 3, Voyage…. 2, 1.”

Killer Croc lunged at her, throwing his full weight at her in an attempt to break as many bones as he could with his impact. Instead of hitting her, he found himself falling from a portal in the sky a few stories up. He braced himself to hit the ground, but it never came. Instead, he got hit from the side with the force of a building collapsing. He hit a nearby building with a sickening crack. The force of the impact crushed the bricks where he hit and caused cascading cracks radiating out from the impact site.

Killer Crock shook his head as he fell to the ground on all fours and looked over where the first hero had been. Everything looked exactly the same until suddenly she disappeared and a portal stood where she had been. She reappeared a few feet away at Kid Flash’s side. He shook his head to try to make sense of the change and looked back to the building that had hit him. He barely had time to take note of a boy in a black shirt and red ‘S’ stalking toward him, eyes glazed with rage, before the boy raised his arm and punched him again, knocking him back into the building.

Superboy hit him again and again until Killer Croc passed out from the beating. Superboy raised his arm again but stopped when Chimera laid her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said softly but firmly. “He’s down. He isn’t a threat anymore.”

He lowered his arm breathing heavily, still glaring at the villain.

“Where do we want him to go, Aqualad?” Chimera spoke quietly into her com. “I need a destination to move him.”

“We’ll do it the old fashioned way today and call the police. I’ll make sure they show you Arkham later.” Aqualad stated calmly coming around the corner to observe the scene.

“Guess you’ll never know if your definitions match up now.” Artemis commented coming up next to Chimera.

“Shame. He looked… interesting.” Artemis let out a quiet laugh.

“How’s he doing?” She asked nodding toward Kid Flash as she moved to check on him. He was now starting to push up onto his knees, though he was still swaying a bit.

“He seems okay, more dazed than anything. We’ll have to give a better checkup when we get back.” Chimera reported. “I have to recharge anyway. Should I take him back to the ship?” Chimera asked Aqualad. He nodded.

“Artemis, go with her. Robin, I want you here to deal with the police. This is your town, I’m sure you know them. I’ll call it into Batman and see what he wants to do with the original mission. Superboy, I want you to keep an eye on him until the police get here. Do not hit him again unless he wakes up.” Superboy nodded, never moving his glare from the villain’s collapsed body.

Superboy waited restlessly to check on Chimera, his hands curled into white-knuckled fists the entire time they spoke to the police. After about an hour, Superboy, Aqualad, and Robin returned to the ship. Superboy automatically sought out Chimera. She was sitting with Kid Flash and Artemis, Kid Flash talking and making wild gestures while Artemis and Chimera laughed at him. Superboy looked up to meet Chimera’s eyes and kept eye contact for a few seconds. When she smiled at him, he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding since she was first attacked and relaxed his hands. Chimera walked over to him and gently laid her hand on his arm. “You okay?” Her eyes were filled with concern.

“I’m fine.” He growled. “Are you okay?” He looked her up and down, searching for any signs or injury. “How could you let him get you like that?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse and still won the fight.” She gave him a small smile. “He hits hard, but not as hard as some super teammates I’ve gone up against.” He huffed at her, his eyes still furrowed and frowning at her. “He got a lucky hit in. It happens. I recovered and I had teammates there to help. Thank you.” Her eyes were shining with gratitude and softness. Superboy’s eyes softened too and nodded at her.

She could see he was still tense. Watching a teammate get hurt had that effect on people. She certainly had that reaction when Adrien or Alya or Nino or any of her old team took a hard hit. “Can I give you a hug?” She asked tentatively. Hugging her friends after the fight had always calmed her down. She hoped it did the same for him.

He stared at her uncertain how to respond for a few seconds but finally nodded again and opened his arms to her. She smiled at him and walked into his embrace, holding him tightly. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her firmly to his chest. He rested his head on hers, holding her close for a few minutes, slowly relaxing in the knowledge she was safe and close.

<><><><><>

Superboy watched Chimera as she sketched in the common room. She sat with her back against the armrest of the couch, her legs stretched out across the couch. Luckily, she was short enough that it still left room for Superboy. She had turned on some old looking movie she was barely paying attention to.

He walked in, sat on the free cushion, and watched the movie for a few moments. “What even is this? This is terrible.”

She looked up startled like she hadn’t noticed him sit down. “Hey. This is Highlander.” He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. She gave him a sheepish grin. “One of my friends is a movie guy. He thought I might like it. Good period costumes, he said. Fun sword play and light shows.”

He nodded and looked back to the movie. After a few minutes of glancing at Chimera from the corner of his eye he finally asked the thought that had been on his mind since their mission. "So… who's Felix?" He didn’t look away from the movie when he asked.

Chimera glared at him. "I thought we agreed we forget any personal information we find out during a mission."

He finally looked over at her with a dubious look. "No, you suggested that. None of us agreed to it." He leaned back and rested his elbow on the back of the couch. "So, tell me about Felix and how do I find him? I just want to talk to him."

She snorted. “You’d be the first. Most want to punch him in the face. Which is exactly what I did and I can assure you it is in fact as gratifying as you hope it would be.” She gave him a grin. He huffed out a laugh before turning his attention to the movie.

After a few more moments, she looked back up at him. “So… are you excited for school?”

He groaned. “No.”

She furrowed her brow. She really wished she could go with him to help him at school. She was nervous about making friends in her new school too, but at least she was used to school. This was going to be Superboy’s first time going to school at all. She really wanted to forget about the whole identity issue and go with him, or get them to send him to her school so she could keep a covert eye on him, but they wanted to keep him close. “Sorry,” she mumbled instead. “Do you know what you’re going to wear?”

He looked at her for a second or two as he thought about it. He motioned to his shirt and gave her a confused look. She looked back at him in horror. “You can’t wear that! Secret identity. You have to wear something different.”

He groaned and huffed at her. He thought for a second then took off his shirt, turned it inside out, and put it back on that way. Her eyes opened wide in surprise and she blushed heavily before turning back down to her sketchbook. “Yeah, um… No.” She stammered out, focusing solely on the blank page in front of her and willing her blush to go away. This is not how teammates react to other teammates. “I’ll come up with something else for you. What colors do you like? “

He furrowed his brow and looked down at his shirt. “Black… red…dark.”

She nodded, “Broody colors. Got it.” He scowled at her. She gave him a cheeky grin. “I’ll have something for you tomorrow. We’ll work on what your style is as you decide what you like. I should get your measurements though.” She looked down at her notebook and started sketching again. After a few moments of sketching, she looked over shyly. “But, so you know, maybe don’t do that at school.” She said motioning toward his shirt.

He frowned at her, “Why?”

She stared at him incredulously for a few moments, trying to decide if he was serious or not. She finally realized he was when he continued to frown at her, confused about her concern. She wasn’t sure whether his innocence was incredibly sweet or concerning. “Oh, my sweet summer child, I really wish I could be there to protect you tomorrow, but… identity, you know? So I’m going to need you to protect yourself.”

“I’ll be fine.” He grumbled, turning to the movie.

She continued to stare at him a bit longer before speaking up again. “You know you’re handsome, right?”

His head whipped toward her, his eyes wide. “You think so?”

She let out a disbelieving laugh and smiled at him. “I know so. Extremely handsome and broody. A bad boy with a good heart.” His cheeks started turning pink as she spoke. Every word turned them darker. “People are going to be falling all over themselves to get close to you. Boys, girls, thems. You’re going to get all of their attention. Some will show it like Artemis, some more subtle, some less subtle. You’re going to get a lot of attention at school, people wanting to get close to you because you’re handsome, not everyone, but some.” She paused to look at him earnestly. “Just be careful. Make friends with people who make you feel better, happier, lighter. You don’t have to make friends with anyone, but if you meet someone you like, you should. Although if it seems like something someone says is too good to be true, it probably isn’t.” She warned him with a dark look crossing her eyes quickly.

“I don’t need more friends. I have enough friends. Friends who think I’m extremely handsome.” He grinned at her.

She burst out laughing not expecting him to be that bold. She rolled her eyes. “You don’t need more friends, but more friends can make life better sometimes. If it’s the right people.” He grunted and turned back to the movie.

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, Chimera sketching different outfits for Superboy, Superboy watching the movie and frowning occasionally. The silence was broken occasionally with Chimera asking him if he liked some element of a character’s costume or not. About half an hour into the movie Superboy grumbled, “This movie is depressing.”

Chimera looked up from her third sketch and took notice of the movie again. “What makes you say that? The effects aren’t that bad, not for that time anyway. I mean the sword fighting could use some work and the accents are terrible, but… I think it’s fun.”

Superboy continued to watch the movie for a while longer. “I don’t age either.” He said quietly. Chimera looked at him questioningly. He sighed and looked down. “I’ll be this age, physically at least, for the rest of my life. Part of the cloning process.”

Chimera gave him a sad look and reached out her foot, the only part of her body that was close enough to touch him, to pat his leg. “At least you’ll be hot.” She offered with a sympathetic smile. He huffed at her and returned to watching the movie, but he couldn’t help the small smile on his lips.

She watched the movie with him for a while longer watching as the main character’s wife died of old age in his arms while he was still the same age as when they met. She frowned at the screen and said quietly, “I’ll age, but much, much slower than everyone else.” Superboy looked over at her in surprise. She offered him a mirthless smile. “It’s part of the powers I have now. I’ll live for centuries if I want to.” She looked back to the movie and frowned as the main character buried his wife. “I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.”

Superboy nodded at her. “At least you’ll be hot.” He offered with a smile.

She laughed out loud at him. Once she settled down she gave him a crooked smile. “I’d take that more to heart if you had any idea what I look like.”

He gave her a small smile and watched the rest of the movie in silence. When it was over, he looked over at Chimera to find her examining him with her eyes narrowed as though sizing him up. “What?” he demanded.

“You should use the name Conner for school.”

“Like the guy in the movie?”

“Yeah. You need a name. Conner’s a good name. I think it suits you.” She nodded as she said it, like it was decided.

He fought the blush that wanted to appear again. If she liked the name, that’s what it would be. “I can live with Conner.” He nodded nonchalantly, trying not to give away how significant he thought it was.

“No, I live with Conner.” She gave him a cheeky grin and started laughing at her own bad joke. He groaned and threw a pillow at her. Thankfully, she was in her suit because he threw it with enough force to burst the pillow open when it hit her. She laughed harder as the fluff rained down on them.

“But, so you know, maybe don’t tell jokes like that at school.” He said in mock distain.

She smiled wistfully at her sketchbook. “Yeah, I think my old partner rubbed off on me. He would have loved that joke.”

“Old partner?”

“Yeah… um… I don’t think… identity secrets, you know?”

“Okay. Can you say, is he still alive?”

“Yes, he is.”

“What happened? Why isn’t he your partner anymore?” He paused for a few seconds to gauge her reaction. “If you can say.” He added quickly.

“I can’t…identity.” She gave him an apologetic look. They sat without looking at each other for a while. “He’s not a hero anymore.” She whispered after a few minutes. He looked up at her with wide eyes. “Oh, no. He didn’t become a villain.” She rushed to reassure him. “He just… he went through a lot and decided to walk away.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Um…I miss…” She thought how to word her response. She wanted to answer him honestly, but it wasn’t safe for anyone to know they were still close. “Yes.” She answered instead.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. He was my teammate, my best friend. I’m happy he did what he had to do to take care of himself. He’s happier now, or he will be eventually. And now I have a new team and more friends. We both did what we had to do.”

Conner nodded and looked around the room trying to figure out how to make the air feel less awkward. His eyes landed on the end of the credits. “He’s not the guy that recommended this movie is he? Because that is not a good friend.”

She barked out a laugh. “He’s not. But the one that recommended it is like a brother, so watch it.” She narrowed her eyes at him and pointed her pencil at him in mock threat.

“Maybe I’ll get to meet him someday then.” He kept his voice light but gave her an uncertain look.

She gave him a brilliant smile and nodded. “I hope so.” He smiled back at her and helped pick up the pillow fluff that surrounded them.

Tags:

@mickylikesstuff @mystery-5-5 @roguishredaxion

#maribat #marikon #connerette #connette #konmari #conner x marinette #capturing a dream

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queen-ofsunflowers · 3 years

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DadWorth AU: Part 2 (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney)

More DadWorth AU! And here we finally get into the details of the games, so the parts that remain the same will be briefly touched upon. This is gonna be longer than the last post, so here we go!

< Part 1 | Part 3 >

Turnabout Sisters

Things actually start a bit before the game does, and its with Kay at age fourteen and ready to start high school. (to me her birthday is in December, so she would be fourteen by the time the school year begins). And she has a certain one in mind.

I’ve mentioned before that Kay ends up idolizing Mia and follows her cases. Being surrounded by law for the past couple of years and wanting to help people (because Kay has yet to learn about the true Yatagarasu), Kay decides that she wants to be a defense attorney like Mia as opposed to a prosecutor like her dad and Miles (I am one of few people that I think subscribe to the idea of Defense Attorney!Kay... but that’s where we’re going here.)

Miles hestiates when he learns that Kay “wants to be a lawyer”, but after pressure from both Franziska and Gumshoe, he agrees to the idea. After studying and working hard, Kay ends up getting accepted to Themis Legal Academy in the defense attorney course -- something she hides from Edgeworth because she’s afraid that he’ll disapprove. But this is something that she really wants to do. i have an idea, shhh--

So, Kay’s first day of school just happens to fall on September 6. If anyone recognizes this date, it means Edgeworth is going to be home late, as he almost always is when he’s working on a new case. Because this is where we hit Turnabout Sisters.

Kay’s first day of school goes pretty well. It’s all getting to know you stuff, so it’s gonna be easy. Everyone tries to keep Kay from finding out about the details of Edgeworth’s newest case throughout the course of the day, but this fails because Miles doesn’t know that Kay looks up to Mia. So he gets very much confused when she gets upset upon learning Mia Fey had been murdered when he goes about their usual conversation about his latest case the next morning.

So, she’s upset and Miles has no idea why. On his side, he finds out the defense attorney for this case is Phoenix Wright. So he’s not doing so well because the past is coming back to bite him in the butt, and Kay goes to school feeling like crap. And things only start to get worse from there when two students in the prosecutors’ course decide its a good idea to mess with one of the students in the defense attorney course.

Enter Sebastian Debeste and Klavier Gavin. (i know klavier’s a good guy, but he still needs the character development to happen) They are not the nicest of people when Kay first encounters them. She’s down, and they decide its a good time to kick her while she’s down.

She confides in this to Ema, who gets super mad about this. She knows that she needs to tell an adult about it, so she somehow manages to tell Gumshoe about this (how they know each other, i’m not sure, probably happened after she met Kay.) And then Gumshoe goes to Miles while they’re investigating the next day and tells him that Kay’s been having a tough time adjusting (Ema had left out the bullying bit, since Kay had made her promise not to tell, thinking it would make things worse.)

Miles takes things into consideration a little bit (he’s too focused on his case), and promises to pick Kay up from school the next day if Gumshoe drops her off (an idea that came up from Gumshoe mentioning it would be a good idea to have someone she trusts there after a bad day.)

The date is September 9, Gumshoe drops Kay off at school as planned while Edgeworth goes to trial. And everything for both of them goes downhill from there. Edgeworth gets his ass handed to him by Phoenix and gets his first loss. Kay’s bullying continues. Too absorbed in his loss and the repercussions of it, Miles forgets about Kay entirely. Kay’s left outside of Themis, heartbroken and her trust in Miles barely even remains. After about an hour or so, she calls Badd to come and get her since she knows he’ll always be there if she needs him.

Miles hears Kay come home, and gets confused when she runs past him and up to her room. Badd explains everything and how Miles is an idiot.

So, Badd’s pissed at Edgeworth. Gumshoe gets mad at Miles when he finds out about what happened with Kay. von Karma is pissed at Edgeworth for losing at case to a rookie of all things. Kay’s upset with him because of what happened. Franziska’s mad at him on both fronts. The media is having a field day with his record being broken. It’s the second worst day of his life.

Turnabout Samurai

So, time goes on since the horrible, no-good very bad day. Miles is trying to deal with everything and everyone being mad at him. He’s becoming emotionally unavailable and Kay’s not helping at all since she’s pulled away from him. Since he forgot about her, she thinks he doesn’t care about her anymore. She just stays out of his way.

Miles is emotionally out of the window and does just what he needs to do to keep Kay happy or so he thinks. He’s too absorbed in his work and stressed out from his previous loss to try and reverse the damage caused to his reputation. Meanwhile, Kay’s bullying at Klavier’s and Sebastian’s hands continues. She doesn’t know what to do about it (even though Ema continually tells her to tell someone, Kay doesn’t want to make things worse.)

Things come to a head for her right around the same time that Edgeworth gets assigned the Steel Samurai case against Phoenix Wright. Kay’s absolutely done with Sebastian’s and Klavier’s treatment of her and remembering Ema’s words, she acts.

Kay ends up punching Klavier in the face when he pushes her over the edge, much to everyone’s surprise. They both get dragged down to the office by a teacher after the fight escalates a little (if it even can be called that, only physical blows traded was Kay’s punch.)

They’re in trouble, they start arguing over who started it, etc. The teacher (who I should note is Courte) puts an end to it, believing that they are both to blame for what happened -- Kay for retaliating the way she did and Klavier for antagonizing her in the first place. With the principal’s agreement, both of them are sent home for the day after their guardians are called.

For Kay, she immediately gets called back by Edgeworth while waiting. Edgeworth is in the middle of the Steel Samurai case, so he can’t do anything. He actually grows irritated over what Kay did, not listening to her explanation over what happened and only saying that they’ll talk about it when he gets home. Kay tries to find someone else who

Meanwhile, Courte takes Klavier aside and tries to find out what happened to cause the whole mess in the first place. Something got into his head that this was how it was supposed to be with defense attorneys and prosecutors (what this is or who that was that planted it is up for debate). He’s told that he’s wrong. They’re both on the same sides of the law, and they’re both there to find the truth -- not to fight about it until there’s a victor. They are allies. Not enemies.

And then Klavier comes back and overhears Kay’s conversation with Edgeworth with Courte’s words echoing in the back of his mind. Klavier’s just like... “okay, she may be a defense attorney, but i don’t think she’s that different from me at all”. Kristoph is a terrible guardian, but the only one that can take care of Klavier, and he understands a bit of what Kay is going through right now because of that.

And immediately feels like shit for how he treated her prior. So when Kay goes to apologize to him from ya know... punching him, it’s him that starts apologizing. And after a very, very long conversation, they decide to start over and Klavier invites Kay to eat lunch with him and Sebastian the next day and even offers to see if he can get her a ride home. Kay reluctantly agrees.

And so their friendship starts there.

It takes Sebastian a bit longer to warm up to Kay like Klavier has, but eventually takes to her when she doesn’t hesitate to point out the mistakes he makes. She corrects him without missing a beat. Kay’s not hesitant to call him out on bullshit when needed. As a result, Sebastian’s a bit smarter than compared to canon.

So, the chaotic duo of Ema and Kay grows to include Klavier and Sebastian. (ema has no reason to hate klavier yet, that’s not until phoenix is disbarred if my theory is right, but his attitude does tick her off sometimes).

Things are starting to get better for Kay, that’s for sure. Miles, on the other hand... not so much.

We all know what happens with him. Unnecessary feelings, questioning just about everything that you know and who you are, etc. This doesn’t go unnoticed by Kay, who wants to try and do something to help. What that is, though, she doesn’t know yet.

Turnabout Goodbyes

Winter break is coming up, and it’s pretty clear at this point that Sebastian and Klavier (the latter moreso than the former) are in tight with Kay and Ema. Kay wants to do something to fix her relationship with Edgeworth, leading to a suggestion of being honest with him about how she feels. If he listens (unlike their guardians), then that means things could turn around.

Kay declines this idea as the first thing they decide Kay should do is tell Edgeworth that she’s in the defense course. She’s still wary about what he might say or do if he finds out she’s going to be a defense attorney rather than the prosecutor he thinks. She does, eventually, agree to talk to him about how she feels. Confessing to being in defense does still linger in the back of her mind.

Christmas starts to draw nearer and nearer, and the two usually spend it together (a tradition born from the first one they had. As bad as that time of year is for Miles, he tries to not let it show for Kay’s sake. Kay doesn’t know about DL-6 and he wants to keep her as far away from it as possible.) So Kay is confused when he heads out Christmas Eve.

Kay has no idea who to turn to... except for one person. So, Christmas morning, while Gumshoe does his best when it comes to figuring out the truth with the investigation, Kay runs all the way down to Wright & Co. Law Offices. (Edgeworth had talked about Wright before in conversations that Kay overheard. That, and it was talked about that he was the only one who managed to take down Edgeworth at school.)

This is the first time that Kay meets Phoenix face-to-face, so he’s pretty confused about as to why a teenager is banging down his door on Christmas asking for help. But, he’s not someone whose going to say no, so he and Maya head down to the detention center with Kay.

Imagine their shock when they learn that the person Kay was talking about is Miles Edgeworth. Who immediately turns around and refuses their help. At all. Because he wants them as far away from this as possible.

Phoenix and Maya leave with Kay, and two out of three are not about to give up so easily. So, yeah. Kay’s finally part of the main storyline.

She helps Phoenix and Maya on their investigation and in the process does learn about DL-6. And her heart just breaks when she learns that her guardian went through all of this. Which is why Kay is relieved when Miles finally

In the meantime, Phoenix and Maya are trying to figure out what Kay’s connection to Edgeworth is since neither of them explained. And all they can get Gumshoe to say is that Kay is someone that knows Miles rather well. (something that’s supported with Kay knowing about Edgeworth’s fear of earthquakes.)

Kay’s in the audience during this case, primarily because Miles expresses that he doesn’t want her anywhere near von Karma (especially for something that would technically be her first trial). But she’s also not going to leave, so she just watches. Kay gets excited when Phoenix starts tearing von Karma’s case apart. (at this point, Kay only vaguely knows von Karma from Reminiscence. She knows that he’s Miles’s mentor and nothing more than that.)

She helps with the DL-6 investigation. The one thing I should note surprises her the most about it is the date which it takes place. Added angst for this whole case (primarily comes from my headcanon birthday for Kay) -- It’s revealed that Miles was careful on December 28th to not let Kay know what was going on with him since it was also her birthday.

Kay has only known Larry for two days, and he’s already giving her a headache (and making her question how Miles and Phoenix are friends with him a little bit). But she’s super excited that he was able to help in the end. She also finds the story about the class trial super sweet, remarking how it reminds her about how Edgeworth used to be like when they first met.

She ultimately is incredibly worried about Miles as the case goes on. Especially with how he thinks that he killed his father. The man Kay knows would never do that -- even on accident. She wants to help as much as possible, even if she can’t stand with the defense. She also wants to stick it to von Karma after everything he’s done. Especially after the confrontation in the evidence room, where Kay lets loose more information than she should, so von Karma (along with Maya and Phoenix) end up finding out about Kay’s relation to Miles.

Phoenix asks her about this later, and Kay explains everything. She begs him to get Miles a Not Guilty verdict since she doesn’t want to lose yet another father of hers. He promises her that he’ll try.

So we get to the final trial day. Kay thinks that Phoenix calling the parrot as a witness is one of the most hilarious things ever later on, but in the moment, she thinks he’s gone crazy, but it works. Miles is declared innocent and she couldn’t be happier... until he flips the switch and confesses to DL-6 after von Karma brings up

Kay gets so mad and upset about this. She corners him in the defendant’s lobby, which is not a pleasant conversation. She knows that Miles is innocent. They’ve been fighting this whole time and he’s just willing to give up that easily? Kay feels like she’s being left behind all over again. She doesn’t understand why Miles won’t “believe in me, who believe in you”. And she storms out. So there’s a bit more guilt on Miles’s shoulders, and a small bit of incentive for him to actually get a not guilty.

So, it cuts to Kay in the hallway making her way back to the gallery. She’s relaying to what’s going on to her friends over a text conversation (understandably, they’re all pissed) when she bumps into someone on her way back.

Yeah... Kay runs into von Karma again. And knowing what she does about him, Kay’s just fucking pissed. There’s a confrontation between the two where Kay comes to understand why Miles is so afraid of this man. He puts an immense amount of fear into her. She just wants to get away.

Kay hits his shoulder by accident in the process and notices the amount of pain it causes him after she runs off. So, long story short, Kay manages to figure out where the second bullet is before Phoenix does, and the trial concludes similar to how it does in canon, but with Kay’s intervention. She’s beyond relieved that Miles is free and von Karma is arrested.

She also feels horrible about yelling, and decides to take her friends’ advice to heart. She almost lost Miles once, and if that ever happens again, she wants him to know the whole truth.

The first thing Kay does after Miles is declared innocent is confess everything to Miles. She’s stammering and nervous and is barely through it when Miles cuts her off because he already knows Kay’s studying to be a defense attorney. She’s not as slick as she thinks, Gumshoe had mentioned multiple times that Phoenix could be someone Kay could learn a lot from, etc. That, and he is Kay’s guardian. He keeps in contact with the school.

He’s not disappointed in her either, which is the one fear that Kay had. He understands not following in your father’s footsteps. If it makes her happy, then that’s fine with him. He is surprised that she finally told him the truth, though. Kay promises not to keep anymore secrets from him. She wants to trust him again.

Things end well between them... as well as they could be after that whole mess, but their relationship is steadily on the mend and all is right with the world.

...until February.

Rise From the Ashes

IF YOU ALL REMEMBER SOMETHING THAT I MENTIONED IN PART 1, THEN YOU KNOW THAT THIS CASE IS GOING TO GET WORSE FOR ONE MILES EDGEWORTH THAN IT ALREADY IS.

Kay gets dragged into this one by Ema when she comes by in tears over Lana getting arrested. Kay mentions what happened back in December and says that Phoenix might be able to help, so Ema drags her down there. Phoenix is responsible for two teenagers rather than one. Again.

let’s just pretend that they don’t have school for whatever reason

Not much changes other than Kay’s involvement in SL-9. People keep bringing up the fact that Ema was not alone. And Kay’s thief skills starting to show up a little bit. Again, she won’t discover the truth about the Yatagarasu until later down the line.

She also wants to kick Gant in the shin more and more as the case progresses.

When it gets to the point where they find out that Miles is going to resign,

It’s only during the last day of the trial that Phoenix (and by extension, everyone else but Maya) finds out about Miles’s connection to Kay when he brings up the fact that there was another witness present when Ema was attacked. And Miles isn’t able to hide who it is any longer.

So, Kay has to testify. And it’s not fun. It all ends with her asking them to leave Edgeworth alone, since he didn’t do anything wrong (or he didn’t know that he was doing anything wrong -- something that is later provable.) So, this case is full of family feels, and Phoenix feels like shit for having to do this.

But in the end, Kay’s memory is a bit more clearer than Ema’s, which leads to Gant’s arrest being a bit easier. Ema still leaves the country to study forensics in Europe, and there’s a tearful goodbye and promises to stay in touch between her and her friends. But the impact that the case leaves on Edgeworth does not change. He feels like he isn’t fit anymore -- as a prosecutor or as a guardian for Kay since he couldn’t protect her.

So, the night of February 25, Kay’s woken up in the middle of the night by Miles. She’s half-asleep, and really doesn’t understand what he’s saying at the moment. He’s saying that he has to leave for a while, and tells her that he cares about her. She’s just like “okay” and ends up falling back asleep.

The next morning, Kay wakes up and the house is just about empty. She can’t find Miles anywhere. She just thinks that he’s busy with a new case that needed him in the office early, or they needed him to help clear up what happened yesterday or something, so she doesn’t think much of it.

That is until Gumshoe picks her up from school early. He never does this. No one really does this without warning, like if its a doctor’s or dentist appointment or something.

Her entire world falls apart when he tells her about the note that they found on Edgeworth’s desk that morning.

Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death.

And that ends Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Kay doesn’t interact with the story all that much, but we already have Egdeworth’s perspective on the game for the most part. A lot of this takes place from Kay’s POV... including Justice for All. Which I have some... interesting things in mind for.

#ace attorney #ace attorney au #miles edgeworth #kay faraday #ema skye #phoenix wright #maya fey #dick gumshoe #klavier gavin #sebastian debeste #manfred von karma #queen speaks #dadworth au #kay edgeworth au

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five-rivers · 4 years

Text

Goals

Hey! @puns-are-great-and-so-is-danny! Here is your gift fic! It got a little out of hand, and it doesn’t have a super solid ending, but I hope you like it. :)

Dear Albus,

I hope this letter finds you well. I know these are trying and troubling times, both here and in Britain, and part of me hesitates to ask this of you for exactly that reason. But, as ever, circumstances leave us with few viable options.

News of what happened to Amity Park this Spring has spread far and wide at this point, so I won’t waste your time repeating what you already know. What is not common knowledge, however, is that after the dust settled, the Aurors assigned to the case encountered several irregularities, not the least of which was a disturbingly high number of completely untrained young witches and wizards.

Once news of them gets out, I have no doubt the official line will be that they simply fell through the cracks, that, unfortunately, our spells for finding young magically-gifted persons are imperfect, that the nature of Amity Park obscured them from view. This, I fear, is a lie.

I have no proof, but I believe they were deliberately removed from MACUSA files on account of their heritage. Albus, they are descended from Scourers.

Perhaps that should be obvious, perhaps you had already guessed, considering the so-called reasoning behind the attack on Amity Park, the ideals those murderers professed, but I want to make myself and my own reasoning clear. Though it shames me deeply to say it, those children will not be safe at Ilvermorny, nor, I believe, will they be at any other school on this continent. For all the time that has passed, the Barebones Incident and its repercussions are too fresh in the minds of the people.

There are seven of them. Well, seven that are of concern to me. The others have found or are seeking alternate arrangements. They have been staying at the school, for the time being. My colleagues and I have been attempting to give them a good grounding in magical basics. They would not come to you without foundations.

Albus, I am begging you, accept these students into Hogwarts. I know this is a poor time. I have heard rumors, horrible, horrible rumors, about what is happening in Britain, about what happened at Hogwarts last year, but I fear for these children’s future, for their spirits, should they be forced into a place where they will be hated simply because of who their ancestors were.

I know that even in Hogwarts they would be unable to escape that, but it would be less. Britain does not have the same history with Scourers that we do. More, for some of them, they would not be forced to walk in the same halls as the kin of their parents’ murderers.

I will understand if you refuse, but I am relying on your compassion.

Eagerly awaiting your reply,

Agilbert Fontaine

Headmaster of the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore looked down at the letter from his old friend and colleague and sighed, his heart heavy. Agilbert was not a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Albus knew more about the situation in Amity Park than Agilbert assumed and likely was aware of things that Agilbert himself was not.

For example, while the bulk of the group that had devastated and decimated Amity Park were indeed Magical Separatists and those looking for generations-late revenge on Scourers, their core leadership included American Death Eaters.

He was also aware of the children Agilbert had mentioned. Most of the truly astonishing number of magically inclined children and adults in Amity Park had chosen to find private tutors, go through correspondence or summer courses, or attend one of several small schools in North America that had quickly shuffled to make accommodations for them, on the condition that they hide their origins.

The seven mentioned… Well. They didn’t really have those options. Either their names were too infamous, or they had no one to stay with while they puzzled through correspondence courses. Or both.

And the names. Even here, some of them were well known.

Albus could understand why Agilbert had asked for his help.

But was it responsible to drag these children here while Voldemort was lurking in the shadows, building up his power base once again? To offer them safety he could not give?

For those students already attending Hogwarts, it was one thing, they were already involved, simply by virtue of where they were born and where they lived. But those seven, in America, they would be—

Well. Not safe, perhaps, not with their parents killed and their home ravaged by hostile magic. But… farther away from the direct line of fire.

But would they be? Beyond simply spreading fear and hate, was there another reason for the attack on Amity Park?

Albus heaved another sigh.

At times he enjoyed making decisions like this. Enjoyed power, knowledge, experience, those things people tended to mistake for wisdom, even though he had made more mistakes than anyone else he knew, and all the privileges and responsibilities that came with it, all the control over other peoples’ lives. This was a failing, a flaw, he knew, and time and time again it had come back to bite him. Karmic vengeance for being an old man who kept too many secrets.

But times like these… In times like these, he despised the choices he was forced to make.

“What troubles you, Albus? I can hear you sighing from the other room.”

Albus did not flinch or startle at the ghost’s approach and gently chiding tone. He looked up and smiled thinly at his former and present colleague. It seemed Cuthbert was having a good day. It was a pity so few students saw him at his best, and regarded his lessons as utterly boring, but Albus could never find the heart to replace him. Nor, sadly, the budget. Damn the board of directors.

In answer, Albus turned the letter to face him. Cuthbert Binns was not a member of the Order, either, but he, like every other member of the Hogwarts staff, had been informed of what had transpired at the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He would understand Albus’s dilemma.

“Amity Park?” murmured Cuthbert, tapping the second paragraph. “That sounds… familiar. That—” Cuthbert broke off.

If Albus had not spent significant portions of his life surrounded by ghosts, he would not have caught the subtle change in Cuthbert’s silvery complexion.

“Perhaps you heard about the tragedy that happened there recently.” Which would be a first, even alive, Cuthbert had never really cared about anything that happened more recently than a hundred years ago, but not impossible.

“Tragedy? No.” Cuthbert shook his head. “Amity Park it’s—It is…” He trailed off, looking down at the letter, disturbed. “Albus, I have known you for many years. You have been here for many years, with all us ghosts, and… You know there are things the dead do not speak of to the living.”

Albus did know. “Are you saying Amity Park is related to one of those things?” Could this be another attempt on Voldemort’s part to defeat death? His suspicion regarding horcruxes was bad enough, what that could mean for Harry… But if that man had yet another way to stave off death…

Cuthbert dithered, and Albus wished fiercely that he could trust him enough to tell him about the Order, about Voldemort’s plans, to impress upon him how important this was, how vital that Albus know.

But he couldn’t. It would just take one bad day, and one misplaced question from a student related to someone unfortunate, and everything would come tumbling down.

No. Albus could not push him.

“I—I must go,” said Cuthbert, halfway through the wall. “I have to look into something. I’ll be back before you know it.”

He was not.

Albus had still not made a decision on Agilbert’s letter the next night. He had consulted Minerva, Severus, and the other teachers who were also in the Order on the matter, and had distracted himself with other, arguably more important, matters.

(The eyes on Number Four Privet Drive, the movements in and out of the Malfoy residence, the horribly dangerous games Severus was playing, the master schedule for the next school year, the still-empty Defense Against the Dark Arts post, extra protections on Hogwarts’ boundaries, how to keep the Order safe…)

But he shouldn’t put something like this off for much longer.

It would be much easier to deny Agilbert’s request. As tragic as the seven students’ circumstances were, they weren’t his responsibility, and he had so many.

Would you feel the same if the attackers had been Gellert’s people?

They’re children. Like your students. Like Adri—

Albus closed his eyes and forced the tiny and vicious voice away, out of his mind.

“Sir Nicholas wants to speak to you,” said one of the portraits.

Surprised, Albus turned his head to face the image of his predecessor. “Of course. Could you tell him he can come in?”

A few minutes later, the Gryffindor ghost floated through the wall. “Hello, Albus,” he said, the outlines of his figure crisper than they usually were, and continued before Albus could greet him, “I am sorry to interrupt you like this, but is it true? Seven students from Amity Park?”

“Cuthbert told you?”

“He told all of us,” said Sir Nicholas, shrugging in a way that made his head roll unsettlingly. “You should accept them.”

Albus raised his eyebrows.

“There is a certain element of risk involved,” the ghost’s voice was careful, “but if they come to Hogwarts, there is a possibility that you may gain a powerful ally, and that…” Here, Sir Nicholas hesitated. “Certain ancient wrongs might be righted.”

“I suppose it is that second the ghosts are interested in?” asked Albus, both curious and, despite himself, amused.

Sir Nicholas gave him a gentle smile. “Do not imagine that we are careless of your struggles, Albus, but many of us were long dead before you were born. We care, but… sometimes the picture in front of our eyes is not the same as the one before yours.”

That was reasonable.

However.

“Can you give me any more detail?” asked Albus, hopefully.

“I’m afraid not,” said the ghost, drifting backwards.

The next letter from Agilbert was much thicker and contained the records of seven new Hogwarts students.

The wand turning in his fingers was made of pear wood. Not that Danny could tell, just by looking, but the wandmaker, who had accompanied her wares to Ilvermorny, had been very talkative, even when Danny had… not.

Pear wood, cut from a tree that had grown up through a chain-link fence on the wandmaker’s property. She had meant to cut it out, she said, but by the time she had gotten around to doing so, there had been bowtruckles in it, and she wasn’t about to cut down a good wand wood tree.

Danny still wasn’t entirely sure what bowtruckles were to be honest.

The wood of the wand was normal. The core, apparently, was not. It was hair from a magical creature, which most wand cores were, but the wandmaker had cheerfully admitted to having no idea what the hair was from. It had shown up in her workshop one day, in a little box, black and white, in neat little bundles.

Danny had suspicions about where it had come from.

Suspicions that had been exacerbated by the fact that both Sam and Tucker had been ‘chosen’ by wands with the same core.

Anyway, Danny had liked the wandmaker, even if he thought she was a bit weird, for using components that just showed up out of nowhere in her work.

(She reminded him a bit of Mom.)

Danny wasn’t sure why he was thinking of her. It had been months since then. But he was feeling lonely, even though his friends were just in the next room, and Jazz was here, and maybe she was the closest he would let his mind get to…

To…

“If you keep doing that,” said Jazz, “you’re going to put your eye out.”

Danny glanced over at her. There was an east-facing window behind her, and the sun was shining through her shoulder, lighting her up like stained glass.

“If they catch you in color, they’re going to have questions.”

Jazz rolled her golden eyes, but the color drained out of her, leaving her ‘properly’ silver and gray. “If they actually listened, instead of dismissing everything weird in Amity as untrained magic acting up, then they wouldn’t need to have questions.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t, and I don’t think they’re going to. So, considering what we have to do…”

“We need all our advantages. You don’t have to tell me again,” said Jazz. She pulled a face. “Well, you did, actually, I guess. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” muttered Danny. “You only died a couple months ago. It takes time to recalibrate.”

“Mm,” said Jazz, sticking her head through the windowpanes and looking down. She pulled back. “Your escort’s coming up.”

“Oh? Yeah?”

“Or at least someone. It’s hard to tell who, what with the hats and all…”

It was time to go, then. Danny gathered his things and joined the others in the common area.

Hours later, as the sun was setting, nine Americans stepped out of a fireplace in the Ministry of Magic. Seven were students. One was a very haggard chaperon. The last was a ghost whom aurors and representatives from the Department of Spectral Affairs hadn’t quite been able to dissuade from haunting her brother.

Such was life. Such was death.

“Alright, kids,” said the chaperon, chivying them towards a central area. “We just have to go through customs, and then we can find a place to relax until the representatives from Hogwarts get here.”

“I thought we already went through customs,” protested Dash.

“Yeah,” said Paulina. “The American side. To make sure we weren’t smuggling anything out. Now we have to go through the British side, to make sure we aren’t smuggling anything in.”

“Smuggling isn’t really the main issue,” said the chaperon, “but, yes. MACUSA knows you aren’t in the states anymore, and we have to make sure the Ministry over here knows you are, so you can comply with their laws and such. Oh, and so you can get the Trace, but that isn’t important.”

“The Trace?” asked Sam, doubling her word count for the day. Ever since the attack, she had been rather taciturn.

“It’s how they keep track of underage magic over here,” explained the chaperon. “MACUSA phased it out a few years ago. It isn’t very reliable, and besides, recent studies show that magical persons of any age can use magic accidentally, and there’s no good way to tell if there is a magical adult nearby, so…” She gave herself a little shake. “But it’s the law here, and it doesn’t matter. You’ll be at Hogwarts the whole time, anyway.”

“You mean they’ll be tracking us?” asked Danny, trying to keep the alarm from his voice. That could be… problematic. Considering what he was really here for, and all.

“Not you in particular,” said the chaperon, snagging Tucker by the back of his shirt before he could make a detour to investigate a guarded cart of ominously sparking electronics. She pulled him back. “It’s my understanding that every child with the trace on them shows up as a dot on a map, and the dot changes color if magic is performed near them. Some of the more sophisticated versions can determine what kind of magic, but, well… it isn’t like they ever know which dot belongs to which person, so unless you’re living with all no-maj family members—They call them muggles, here, I think—in a particular house, it is very difficult for them to determine who did what. I’d tell you more, but this isn’t my area of expertise. Perhaps the customs agents will know more? You should ask when we go through…”

Danny began to tune her out. He caught Sam’s eye, then Tucker’s, and they all nodded at each other a little bit. Not that they had a plan or anything, but sometimes it helped to know that other people also found a situation to be sucky.

Where would the Minister of Magic be in all this mess, anyway? Danny let his eyes rove over the hall. There was no guarantee that he was even here today, and Danny wasn’t to the point where he wanted to reveal himself. He had been given lots of instructions, but one of them had been to keep himself safe. Clockwork had even said it was a priority.

Best to stick to letters, for now. Even if none of them had been answered, yet.

They reached the long, winding line that was customs, had their luggage gone through yet again. Tucker lost another PDA, and Danny had to wonder how many more he had hidden. The American side of customs had done a pretty good job of finding them. Sam got taken aside for questioning, because some of her goth paraphernalia had a passing resemblance to ‘Dark’ objects. Star had to explain her medications. Valerie set off some sort of magical metal detector, and the customs agents started arguing about what had caused it. No one had found out about her suit yet.

Meanwhile, Danny was sent to another table, to fill out forms for Jazz. Again. Because, for reasons Danny didn’t fully understand, even with everything Clockwork and the other Ancients told him, wizards thought they could control and regulate what ghosts did and where they went.

Danny did not particularly care for wizards, as a group. The paperwork—The stupid, pointless paperwork, because Jazz was going to do what she wanted and no one would stop her, he’d make sure of it—made him angry. A lot of things made him angry, lately, when they didn’t just make him depressed or sullen.

“Breathe, Danny,” said Jazz, leaning down, next to his ear. “The language in this is stupid, but I don’t mind being called names. We both know they’re wrong, and what they think isn’t important anyway, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, forcing his muscles to relax. He finished the paperwork.

They passed through the last customs barrier together, and soon found themselves in a large atrium with a large, extremely gaudy, gold fountain in the center.

Now, Danny had to admit, he had only the briefest of encounters with house elves and goblins, and none at all with centaurs, but he couldn’t imagine that the look of adoration on their faces was at all accurate. At least not for the species as a whole.

He tried to imagine the statue with a ghost in it, with a half-ghost in it, and he just—

Yeah. No.

Wizards.

Or, at least, these wizards. Whatever.

They found a bench off to one side, to wait for the Hogwarts representatives. Danny had to wonder how they’d find them. Would they hold signs? Seemed probable. Everything in the ‘wizarding world’ seemed to be stuck fifty years back in time, if not more.

Or, maybe, the chaperon knew who they were meeting and would wave at them. Like she was doing now.

Okay, so, Danny had to check himself to make sure he wasn’t coming up with random prejudices. Ancients. If his first encounter with the supernatural had been those people in cloaks showing up out of thin air and starting to kill people, he’d probably never be able to pull himself out of that mindset.

Not all wizards were terrible. Like the wandmaker. She was okay.

He took the time to assess the two witches who had come to pick them up. They were opposites of each other, at least in appearance. One was tall, thin, and severe, almost sharp. The other was short and round and sort of soft around the edges. The only areas in which they demonstrated similarity were their age and apparent gender.

“Alright, kids. This is Professor McGonagall,” she gestured to the taller woman, “and this is Professor Sprout. They’re the heads of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, respectively. Minerva, Pomona, these are Dash Baxter, Daniel Fenton, Tucker Foley, Valerie Grey, Samantha Manson, Paulina Sanchez, and Star Thunder.”

“And Jazz,” said Danny, annoyed that his sister had, once again, been left out.

“Hey,” said Jazz. “Nice to meet you.”

Professor McGonagall nodded. “We will be taking you to Diagon Alley to pick up school supplies for the year before we go to Hogwarts.”

“Yeah,” said Star, eyes tracking a flock of apparently animate paper airplanes, “we know.”

McGonagall raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t comment. “Do you want to come with us, Cerise?”

“No, I have a few other things to do on this side of the Atlantic. That’s why they sent me. Have a good time in Diagon Alley, kids, it’s a historic place!”

Danny had to wonder about goblins. Did they just… really like banks, or were they forbidden from holding jobs elsewhere? Or effectively forbidden by prejudice? Because, thus far, he had only seen goblins when changing currency. ‘No-maj’ money to the denominations used by American wizards, and now from that to the infinitely more confusing British ‘galleons.’

It would probably be rude to ask.

Maybe he could find a book…

But were these people self-aware enough to write about stuff like that? He shook his head. Prejudice, prejudice… He barely knew anything about any of these people, he shouldn’t jump to conclusions prematurely.

Not that he didn’t already know several unsavory things about their system of governance, thanks to the Ancients. And their not-so-little terrorist problem. And the fact that they thought erasing people’s memories with a spell that could cause long-term brain damage was A-Okay.

Yeah. But that didn’t mean all of them were bad. Just that their government sucked. Which was true for almost all governments, so it didn’t mean anything.

McGonagall and Sprout were very efficient as they went through the shops, giving the impression that they had done this, or something like this, many times before. They did not allow detours, despite the many, many distracting things on display on the street and in the windows. Professor Sprout, however, kept up a running commentary on what things were, so it wasn’t too frustrating.

About halfway through the shopping trip, they stopped at the place that sold uniforms. Sprout stayed with them, while McGonagall left to go get other supplies. It was an experience. Other than his jumpsuit, Danny had never had any clothing fitted specifically for him before.

The fitting made him… nervous.

The tape measures and needles flew close to his skin. The seamstress who had been assigned to him also kept touching him, which was part of her job, and it wasn’t invasive or anything, but still. Also, there were a lot of other teens, and even some preteen kids, in the store, getting their uniforms, and they were all staring.

What they were staring at wasn’t the same from person to person, Paulina and Jazz seemed to be the biggest targets for whatever reason, but it was still staring. The parents waiting with their kids were staring as well, and Danny started to fidget. Which meant that he got stabbed by the needle a few times. Which wasn’t fun.

But eventually that was over, and they were on their way to Hogwarts.

Considering that Agilbert had tried to compress years’ worth of magical education into the space of a few months for these students, the results were remarkable. True, with one notable exception, none of them were on a fifth-year level in Transfiguration, but Minerva didn’t feel the need to put them all in first-year or remedial classes, either.

She could only hope they did as well in their assessments in other subjects. They would have a hard enough time figuring out schedules for these seven, without having to account for them bouncing across year levels.

She picked up the written assessment from the one student she would be accepting into fifth-year Transfiguration. His penmanship was shaky, none of them had quite mastered writing with quills, and his grasp of the theory behind the spells was incomplete, but it was better than some. She tried not to roll her eyes as she thought of Crabbe and Goyle.

As a teacher, she should be above that. Alas.

Mr. Fenton did have some insights in his essay questions that were truly extraordinary for a person who didn’t even know magic existed at the beginning of the year. Perhaps they had another Hermione on their hands, although he didn’t give off the same air as she did. Or he had spent the summer focusing only on Transfiguration. Or Mr. Fenton had a singular talent in Transfiguration. Regardless, gifted and motivated students were always a pleasure to teach.

Minerva gathered her papers and left to meet Filius, who had tested the students before her. She was tempted to go look in on them now and see how the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was handling her first teaching experience but suppressed the urge. She would see them, and, sadly, Delores Umbridge, at lunch in only an hour.

Which was why she was so surprised to find the children in a hall so far away from Delores’ room.

Then she reminded herself that, appearances aside, these were not fifth-year students. They had no experience navigating the castle.

“Are you lost?” she asked.

The students exchanged glances. “Uh, sort of?” said Miss Sanchez, twirling a curl of hair around her fingers. “We weren’t sure if we should try to find Mr. Snape, or if we should go to the lunch hall.”

“Professor Snape,” corrected Minerva, mildly. “Did you already finish Professor Umbridge’s assessment?”

“She didn’t give us an assessment,” said Miss Manson, angrily.

Minerva’s eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Fenton. “She basically said that she was doing the same curriculum for everyone, so she didn’t need to. So, we were wondering if we should move on to, um, potions? Potions. Or if we should go to lunch, or just hang out, or what.”

“Professor Snape is unlikely to be expecting you at this point,” said Minerva, feeling a headache growing behind her eyes. What was Delores thinking? The same curriculum for all years? For eleven-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds? There would be riots. Or at least hexes. “I can take you to the Great Hall.”

“Thanks, Ms. McGonagall,” said Mr. Foley. And what was that he was hiding in his robes? How many cursed muggle machines had he smuggled in?

Minerva sighed. Honestly, it was probably harmless, though she possibly should speak to Charity about it. “Professor McGonagall.”

“Sorry,” said Mr. Fenton. “It’s just… hard to adjust.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“I suppose it is,” she said. “This way, children.”

Jazz floated through a wall, carefully avoiding the paintings. Their inhabitants weren’t quite ghosts, from what she and Danny could tell, but they also weren’t not ghosts.

It hadn’t taken her long last night to find the actual wizarding ghosts. They’d been expecting her, in more ways than one. But they had been weird. Empty. They didn’t have any ectoplasm in them, and the intensity that was a part of every other ghost Jazz had ever met, Danny included, was absent.

Clockwork and the Lady had warned them about that, before sending Danny, and by extension Jazz, Sam, and Tucker, off on his mission. Jazz just hadn’t quite believed it.

Wizarding ghosts weren’t made of passion, need, want, duty, or even stubbornness. They were made of fear. Fear, by itself, didn’t hold ectoplasm well, especially not fear of death. Wizarding ghosts might as well be mere imprints for all the power they had.

From the beginning, Jazz had been less than enthusiastic about pretending to be one of them. Now, she was even less so.

It wasn’t their fault, though. At least, it wasn’t entirely their fault. None of the ghosts here were around back when the Ancients and the wizards of the day came together and put their names to the Tenebris Carta, and they were trying to make amends. It sounded like they hoped the old treaty could be renegotiated, or that they hoped Danny and Jazz could get them an exception.

Jazz didn’t hate them. Didn’t dislike them or anything, and Danny would probably try to help them, so long as they didn’t turn evil or anything. That was just the kind of person Danny was.

She just needed more time to… adjust to them. And the paintings. Because wow.

“Ah, Miss Fenton!”

Jazz twisted herself over, mid-air. “You can call me Jazz, if you want, Sir Nicholas.”

The silvery ghost smiled. “If you insist. We’re going down to the Great Hall, to introduce ourselves to your companions over lunch. I was wondering if you would like to join us.”

“Sure,” said Jazz, descending to float by the other ghost. “But who do you mean by ‘we?’”

“All the castle ghosts,” said Sir Nicholas, “and possibly Peeves, though he won’t be invited.”

“Peeves?”

“The poltergeist. He isn’t really a ghost. At least… he’s not a ghost like us.”

“Mhm,” said Jazz. “Should I look forward to meeting him, or should I be very afraid?”

“Ah, neither, I suppose? He tends to play pranks, but he never does anything terribly dangerous, and he couldn’t hurt you if he tried.”

“Well,” said Jazz, “as long as he doesn’t mess with my brother, we’ll probably get along just fine.” She flexed her hands to disperse the pale green flames that had started to creep up her fingers. “If he does, I’ll tear him apart.”

“Speaking of your brother, do you have any guesses as to which house he will be joining?”

“I wasn’t under the impression it was a choice,” said Jazz.

“It isn’t, exactly. Students are sorted into the houses with, well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but houses are selected based on a student’s personality, aptitudes, and values. Normally, if they came in as first-years, they would be sorted on the first, but given the circumstances, they’ll be sorted tonight. I’m rather hoping to have a few new students for my house.”

Jazz grinned, detecting a note of competition. “And what does your house look for? Gryffindor, right?”

“Bravery,” said Sir Nicholas, proudly. “Considering your brother’s accomplishments, I’m looking forward to seeing him join.”

“He is the bravest person I know,” said Jazz.

Several dozen ghosts phasing through the walls didn’t just set off Danny’s fight-or-flight response. Sam readied her wrist-lasers, while Tucker grabbed Danny’s wrist and started hunting for a place to hide Danny so his transformation wouldn’t be noticeable. Dash and Star took cover under one of the tables. Paulina pulled out her wand. Valerie materialized a hand blaster.

It wasn’t entirely clear what weapon went off first, but it didn’t really matter. The end result was chaos.

“Oops,” said Jazz.

“I am so, so, sorry,” said Jazz, hovering over Danny. Literally.

“It’s fine,” said Danny. “Really.”

“No, it isn’t. I should have realized how everyone would react. I should have told them to stop it, or something.”

“They were already on their way through the walls when you got there, weren’t you?” asked Tucker, swinging his legs back and forth as he sat on the end of the hospital bed.

No one had been seriously injured, but a few tables had been exploded before the teachers had calmed everyone down and confiscated the ‘bizarre muggle weapons.’ On the other hand, everyone had a number of inconvenient scrapes and bruises that Madam Pomfrey insisted on taking a look at.

“Still,” said Jazz. “I know all of you have PTSD from repeated ghost attacks and those people, I should have known what that would look like to you.”

“Er,” said Dash. “It really is fine.”

“Yeah,” grunted Valerie, which was surprising.

Outside of ‘Team Phantom,’ none of the others interacted with Jazz very much. They didn’t seem to know how. Valerie, however, outright avoided Jazz most of the time.

Which, well. Danny wasn’t about to call her behavior reasonable, but it was definitely in-character. This seemed like a good sign, though.

“Yes, dear,” agreed Madam Pomfrey. “It isn’t your fault. We adults should have said something before things got out of hand like that.” She waved her wand back and forth over Star’s prominent black eye, and the bruise just… vanished. Like Star had never been hurt.

Danny inhaled slowly. It wasn’t the first time he had seen magical healing—The aurors who had arrived a few hours after the attack on Amity Park had done a great deal—but if there was anything of magic that Danny wanted to learn, it was that. And anything protective.

“Is there a class for that?” he asked.

“For what?”

“Healing.”

“Yes, it’s an elective,” said Madam Pomfrey. “Though it does have a few required courses. Perhaps you will be able to take it next year?”

Danny swallowed down envy and nodded. “Yeah, I guess we aren’t going to have time for electives, for the most part.”

“You may be surprised. Now, I think you’re all set, unless you’re hiding something from me?”

The students shook their heads.

“Good. I believe Professor Snape is expecting you?”

“Did that seem… weirdly easy to you?” asked Sam.

Danny thought about it for a second. “Not the ‘what does this plant or animal part do’ questions,” he said, finally, “but the practical part of it? Yeah. It was just… cooking. Really fiddly cooking, but still cooking.”

“Speaking of,” said Tucker, “how did you get by the parts where you had to use animal body parts.”

“Oh, I didn’t,” said Sam. “I just skipped those. I’m pretty sure I failed, judging by the look on Professor Snape’s face. My end result was pretty nasty-looking. It smelled bad, too.”

“You’re the reason we were stuck in an unventilated basement breathing in burnt hair fumes?” asked Paulina.

“Yeah. I mean, it didn’t smell like burnt hair to me, but probably.”

Paulina sighed. “I have to hand it to you, girl, you stand by your convictions.”

“I don’t think it’s unventilated,” said Star, contemplatively. “I wasn’t really paying attention, but there was definitely movement in all the, uh, vapors, or whatever. Professor Snape totally needs a better teacher face, though. Like, does he just have the one expression, or what?”

“No, no,” said Sam. “The look he gave me when I turned in my disaster was way more pronounced.”

“Still needs more than disdain and mega-disdain,” said Tucker. “Even Lancer had a wider range.”

“Come on, guys,” said Danny, “he can’t be much more than, what, thirty? He has time to develop more emotions.”

“Yeah,” said Valerie, flatly. “Give it a couple more years, and maybe he’ll nail down hyper-disdain.”

This surprised a snicker out of everyone. Almost everyone.

“Uh, guys?” said Dash. “I think I might have been the one who made it smell like burnt hair. What was it supposed to smell like?”

“I’m so glad I don’t need to breathe,” said Jazz.

“Oh my gosh, Jazz, that’s way too soon.”

“What do you think?” asked the hat.

The hat.

Danny could understand the paintings. He could almost understand how the paintings worked, even. They had the shapes of people who had once lived, their image, their likeness, and had by virtue of magic snagged a piece of their soul as they left this world.

But a hat. Who would try to give a hat sentience? And how? Was the thing possessed by an extraordinarily unfortunate ghost?

“Um,” said Danny, shaking off the shock. “I liked it!”

“Sorry,” said Star, “I’m just a little surprised. Are you really a… a hat?”

“Yes, I am the Sorting Hat! It is my job to divine which of our four houses each of you should belong to. Weren’t you listening?”

“We were,” assured Star, “it’s just…”

“You’re a hat,” finished Tucker. “Did you used to be a wizard or something?”

“Goodness, no, I was Godric Gryffindor’s hat! He enchanted me.”

“So, are you like a computer program?” continued Tucker. “Are you an AI?”

“No Skynet,” muttered Sam.

“Why do you guys keep thinking I’m going to make Skynet?”

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat. The other teachers were all present, except for the headmaster and Professor Umbridge. Their absences had not been explained.

“When you hear your name,” said McGonagall, “please come up and put the Sorting Hat on. It also usually helps if you sit down on the stool. Once the hat has determined your house, take it off, and put it down for the next person to use.”

Alright. That sounded easy enough. Danny wasn’t quite sure why such a big production was being made of this. A few comments from the teachers and the ghosts—not that Danny had talked to them very much, this was the first full day they’d been at the school—suggested there was some kind of rivalry between the houses, but it couldn’t be that bad. It was school.

Except Casper High had its nasty cliques, too, and he could just imagine how school-sanctioned cliques would work out. Especially if they were backed up by centuries of history and a magic personality test.

Fun.

Not.

He hoped he, Sam, and Tucker would all be in the same house. And that Dash wouldn’t revert to being a bully as soon as other students were added to the mix. And that… Oh, he hoped a lot of things, but he would be thankful if the ‘school’ part of this whole ordeal was as easy and drama-free as possible.

After all, he had other things to worry about.

“Baxter, Dash,” said McGonagall, evenly.

“Good luck, man,” said Tucker, holding up his thumbs. Everyone mirrored him.

Dash looked very strange, sitting on that small stool, but he wasn’t on it for more than a second before the hat shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”

The hat was very loud. Dash returned to the bench with a confused expression on his face.

“Fenton, Daniel.”

Danny stood up slowly. He had expected something more like a conversation. Was this a mind reading hat? Was the ‘take a peek inside your head’ bit literal?

Ugh, this was going to be a pain. Good thing he had a lot of practice in compartmentalizing.

“Ah, a burgeoning occlumens!” said the hat in its warm voice. “How unusual.”

“I have no idea what that means,” said Danny, mildly.

“Oh, I’m sure your teachers will explain it to you. I won’t take the pleasure from them.”

The voice was, Danny decided, more than half in his head, which was… Unsettling. Voices in his head usually either meant mind control, some jerk with telepathy, or someone trying to overshadow him. He didn’t like this. He really didn’t like this.

“No need to be so nervous,” said the hat. “I keep everything strictly confidential.”

“Forgive me if I’m not reassured,” said Danny.

“Hmf. In any case, you have traits that would do you well in any of the houses. Perhaps not Ravenclaw, though. As clever as you are, you are behind academically. You need a more nurturing environment, I imagine. As for the others… You are brave. You love your friends. You’d do anything for them?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.

“And there’s… something else you need to do?”

Danny was silent.

“I can’t see it very clearly, but it is an important task?”

Danny shrugged.

“A goal.”

“Sure.”

“I think, then, the choice is between the badger and the snake,” said the hat. “But I believe the decisive phrase here is ‘do anything.’ Therefore, you will be SLYTHERIN!”

Wow. Even bracing himself, that had been loud.

Danny stood up and carefully deposited the hat back on the stool. He noticed on his way back to the bench that more than one teacher looked flabbergasted, and several spectating ghosts looked disappointed. Almost crushed. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Yes, he was a celebrity among the undead, no he couldn’t be in two houses at once. They should have prepared themselves.

Not to mention that, as important as education was, it was somewhat secondary to his true goals here. Which the ghosts partially knew about.

“Foley, Tucker.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Filius later that evening when all the teachers (sans Umbridge) gathered for a drink.

“I did say you would find the results surprising,” said Sybill, smugly.

“Two muggle-born American transfer students in Slytherin,” said Filius, wonderingly. “I didn’t expect to get any of them for Ravenclaw, but Slytherin?”

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t denigrate my house, Filius,” said Severus.

The diminutive teacher waved his hand. “Oh, that’s not my intention. But you have to admit, it seems like a strange choice.”

“They aren’t really muggle-born, though, are they?” asked Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, opting for tea instead of wine. “I’m not sure about the Sanchezes, but the Fentons were quite prominent, back in the day, weren’t they? At least, one of their ancestors wrote the first English book on new world magical creatures.”

“Muggle-borns and half-bloods are chosen for Slytherin all the time,” said Severus, annoyance clearly increasing. “Not, perhaps, as often as for the other houses, but it does happen regularly. You don’t have to be so shocked.”

“It’s nothing against Slytherin,” assured Pomona. “We were just expecting them to get split between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. American stereotypes in play, I suppose.”

“Mm,” said Septima, who was doodling equations on the back of her wrist. “On my end, my thought process was more that they wouldn’t do well trying to play catchup in Ravenclaw, and they wouldn’t have the ambition and drive to hold their own in Slytherin. The Sorting Hat disagreed.”

“Evidently,” said Severus. He didn’t look especially pleased, but then he never did.

“Better you than me,” said Filius, after a few minutes. “I can’t imagine it will be easy integrating them.”

Minerva, who had three of the students, laughed, “You aren’t getting out of it that easy, Filius. They still have charms. How did they do, by the way? We never really got around to discussing it.”

“None of them were brilliant,” said Filius. “But they have promise. I was wondering what you all thought about doing an accelerated class for some of them, to get them to a higher year-level.”

Being on the Hogwarts Express without Ron at his side felt wrong. Sure, he wasn’t entirely alone, Ginny was with him, and Hegwig, but it felt different. He felt exposed.

Although, that might have had something to do with all the people staring and pointing at him.

The Daily Prophet had spent most of the summer convincing everyone he was a lying show-off. The only things that had really competed with the ‘Harry Potter is delusional’ articles were the ‘haha, America is going to hell in a handbasket, aren’t we glad we aren’t them?’ articles.

(Harry wouldn’t have even cast a glance at the second, except that he and the others had overheard some of the Order members mention Death Eaters had been behind the attack on the muggle town. Even so, reading them made him feel grimy.)

They had to go all the way to the end of the train to get away from the unfriendly eyes, and that’s where they found Neville.

“Hi, Harry,” he said, out of breath. “Hi, Ginny… Everywhere’s full… I can’t find a seat…”

Ginny squeezed past him to look at the compartments behind him. “What are you talking about? There’s room in this one, there’s only Loony Lovegood in here—”

“I don’t want to disturb her—”

“Don’t be silly, she’s alright.” She slid the door open and pulled her trunk in. “Hi, Luna. Is it okay if we take these seats?”

It took a couple minutes to get situated in the compartment, during which time Harry tried not to stare at Luna Lovegood very much. The blonde girl was surrounded by an aura of almost impenetrable oddness.

“Have a good summer, Luna?” asked Ginny.

Luna opened her mouth to answer, then closed it, frowning. “No, actually. My father had some friends in Amity Park. The town in America, you know.” She turned her head slightly. “You’re Harry Potter.”

“I know I am,” said Harry.

The four of them then proceeded to have a fairly enjoyable conversation, right up until Neville’s mimbulus mimbletonia sprayed them all with rancid sap and Cho Chang opened the compartment door.

Cho Chang who he had a crush on.

Yeah.

Harry had a strong desire to curl up and die.

Ron and Hermione did not turn up for over an hour, by which time the food trolley had come and gone, and most of the bounty acquired from it had been eaten.

“Oh, you have food. Brilliant,” said Ron, taking a Chocolate frog from Harry and throwing himself into the seat next to him. “You won’t believe what happened.”

“Malfoy’s Slytherin prefect?” asked Harry. The fear had been buzzing in the back of his head ever since Ron and Hermione had gotten their badges.

“Well, yeah,” said Ron.

“And that complete cow Pansy Parkinson,” said Hermione.

“But that’s not the real surprise,” said Ron, oddly dismissive. “You remember all those articles in the Prophet? Not the ones about you. About that town, in America?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, some of kids who survived were wizards.”

“And witches,” added Hermione. She pulled Crookshanks into her lap.

“Well, apparently their ministry didn’t think they’d be safe over there, so they sent them here. Seven of ‘em.”

“What? They think it’s safe here?” In Hogwarts, maybe it was, except Harry had been snatched away even with all eyes on him, in the middle of a heavily attended competition. “With Voldemort on the loose?”

Everyone flinched.

“Well, that isn’t exactly being publicized,” said Hermione. “Not—Not in the right way. Besides, none of them knew about magic before this summer. They’re all our age, though. It must have been a shock. Especially after losing their families like that.” She shuddered. “We’ve been asked to help them acclimate. That’s why the meeting ran so long.”

“Are they in Gryffindor, then?” asked Luna.

“They’re sort of spread out,” said Hermione. “They’re in all the houses but Ravenclaw.”

“And I’m still not sure how they got put into Slytherin if they’re muggleborn,” said Ron, who had tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It doesn’t make sense,” he complained.

“Merlin was muggleborn,” said Luna. “He was a Slytherin. I’m sure there were others.”

Ron pulled a face.

(Harry thought about Voldemort—About Tom Riddle and his muggle father.)

“Anyway,” said Hermione. “We have three of them. Hufflepuff and Slytherin each have two.”

First Death Eaters in America, and now Slytherins from there? Harry shook himself internally. No, it probably didn’t mean anything.

“We probably won’t see much of them,” said Ron. “They’re taking mostly remedial classes. First and second year stuff.”

“Say,” said Luna, “do you know who the prefects are for the other houses?”

“Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil for Ravenclaw,” said Hermione.

“And Ernie Macmillian and Hannah Abbot for Hufflepuff,” added Ron. “You know, other than helping keep track of the younger kids and patrolling corridors every so often, there’s not really much we’re supposed to do as prefects. From how Percy talked about it, I always sort of thought there’d be more.” Then he grinned. “We can give punishments out if people are misbehaving. I can’t wait to get Crabbe and Goyle for something…”

Predictably, this set off Hermione.

“There’s nothing else about the Americans?” asked Draco, frowning. “I’m not sure how we’re expected to ‘help them acclimate’ with so little information.”

The Head Girl rolled her eyes. “You’re expected to talk to them,” she said. “Considering that they’re real human beings and all. They’ve been through a lot, apparently, and I can appreciate them not wanting to have it spread around.”

Unspoken was the ‘do you?’ at the end of her sentence. Draco let his lip curl. People from other houses were always so eager to think the worst of Slytherin when all they were trying to be was logical.

“I’ll do that, then,” said Draco, stepping out of the prefects’ carriage. He needed to find Crabbe and Goyle. Annoying. As much as he was their leader, and he watched them, they were also there to watch him and—

(Draco chose not to think of the people who had arrived at Malfoy Manor over the Summer, of the things he’d seen.)

(When he was quite young, he’d read a book about muggle Germany during the time of Grindelwald, and how Grindelwald had subtly influenced things in that country. He’d always been struck by the use of informants, of how everyone had been convinced to watch one another and report those who stepped out of line. He found he could appreciate it even more now that he was inside a similar trap.)

But the Americans. It was so odd. They couldn’t have any lineage to speak of. Not if they were living like muggles in some backwater town.

… some backwater town the Dark Lord had seen fit to destroy.

… ‘Fenton’ sounded vaguely familiar.

… Perhaps ‘Sanchez’ was from a Spanish pureblood line.

Draco would have to do research. He was good at that. But whatever he found, he’d have to keep an eye on the Americans.

If nothing else, it would be good to have friends overseas.

“We’ll be in different dorms after this,” said Danny, vaguely depressed. “Different classes, too, most of the time.”

“We can still see each other during the day,” said Sam. “I think the only meal that’s segregated by house is dinner, anyway. We should be able to hang out at all the other times.”

Danny sighed. He had yet to have much success in his missions.

He’d felt something wrong on the seventh floor, but he hadn’t been able to pinpoint it. He’d found a giant inaccessible dungeon full of snake statues, a snake skeleton, and a number of other somewhat questionable things underneath the school. There had been an echo of something there, but whatever it was had been long gone by the time Danny got there. He also had the faint sense of a ghost—a real ghost—beginning to form there, and he hoped he hadn’t messed it up by spreading his ectoplasm around.

On the second front, he hadn’t heard anything from any of the leaders of the wizarding world. Unless he counted a reply from a secretary who thought he was disturbed.

But there was one bright spot. They’d met the Headmaster yesterday, and Danny was certain the man’s wand was one of the two subjects of his third quest. Which was hilarious. Out of everything, he’d thought the Hallows would be the hardest to find.

Not that he could just take it. Not now. Not yet. Not with everything else still so uncertain and Clockwork’s quiet assurance that he would find most of what he needed to at Hogwarts.

(Clockwork and the Lady had made a deal with him, bound in old magic and ghost law. Three tasks. Three nearly impossible quests, but at the end of them, the one who had destroyed half of his world, who had harmed his people, would be gone, and in the meantime Amity Park would be protected. Danny knew he had gotten the better half of the deal, with Clockwork practically on his side. Even with the… other requirements. Still, he couldn’t help but feel discouraged.)

So, he’d stay, and wait, and keep a careful eye on the Headmaster, and try to find the thing on the seventh floor, and figure out what spells worked on ghosts and if he could circumvent them, and figure out how to intercept at least one magical head of state, and, and, and…

Ugh.

“If we aren’t too busy,” said Danny.

“You know we’re here to help,” said Tucker, prodding Danny’s side. “And even if the rest of them don’t know about, you know, I think they’d be willing to help, too.”

“Within reason,” said Sam.

It was true. Surviving near-death experiences together tended to make people—well. Not necessarily friends, but something more than mere acquaintances. Allies, at the very least.

(Especially if a lot of other people had died at the same time, and the survivors were holding on to the relationships they still had with all their strength.)

“I know,” said Danny. He bit his lip. “There’s something on the seventh floor, I think. Need more time to figure out what, though.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” promised Sam.

“And an ear, too,” said Tucker, tapping his. “I’m sure there’ll be lots of rumors and legends in a place like this.”

“Me too. Jazz has been interrogating the paintings, you know.” He frowned. “They’re so weird.”

“Everything about this is weird,” said Sam. “Can’t believe we thought ghosts were the whole extent of the supernatural. It seems so dumb, now.”

“Not really,” said Danny. “I mean, ghosts were all that we saw, and they didn’t really mention anything else.” He sighed. “Guess we should get ready for the feast or whatever?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, standing. “Good luck meeting your classmates. Housemates? How are we even supposed to say that?”

“I don’t know,” said Danny. He sighed. “At least we each have at least one person from Casper with us.”

“That’s true,” said Tucker. “Can’t say I feel like I have much in common with Star, though. Other than,” he gestured, vaguely, “all the Amity Park stuff.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “And you think I have a lot in common with Dash?”

“You have a lot in common with Valerie,” offered Tucker.

Sam shrugged. “We do both fight ghosts.”

Tucker’s grin turned slightly wicked. “And have a crush on the same guy.”

“Take a walk off a

Danny let himself smile. It had been a while since the three of them had gotten some good banter in. It was hard to verbally spar when you were depressed.

Sitting next to Paulina at an otherwise empty table felt strange. But it would feel even stranger to sit not next to Paulina at the very large empty table. Danny let his eyes drift over to the other three house tables. It seemed that the others were of the same opinion, sitting together in little, painfully awkward clusters.

All the close friend groups had been pulled apart, after all.

“Danny,” said Paulina. Her voice wavered at the end.

“Yeah?”

“The wizard kids will have cliques.”

“I mean, yeah, they’re still human, right?” And even ghosts formed groups.

Paulina nodded and clenched her jaw. “We’re going to get into one,” she said, firmly. “We’ll have to find the best one, and fast, otherwise we’ll wind up at the bottom of the pecking order. You know how much that sucks.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, his eyebrows raised. He was a little surprised to be included.

“The wizards we’ve met so far are pretty weird. You know how to deal with weird.”

“Uh,” said Danny. “Is this a strategy thing? Isn’t it a bit too late for that?”

“It’s never too late to salvage social standing, and we haven’t even started,” said Paulina. “Anyway, you’re the backup plan, in case they’re aliens who don’t fall for my charm.” She put a hand to her heart and fluttered her eyelashes.

“Should we even use charm like that here? I mean, since it’s a class, now.”

“Hmf. I’m good at that, too.” She examined her fingernails. “We’ll probably attract a bunch of people, just because we’re here and visible and new. We just need to make sure that people stay interested in us.”

“I’m not sure I want attention, Paulina.”

“Then pay attention and follow my lead. If you’re in the right clique, you can fade into the background. Like Star. No one notices the stuff she gets up to. They’re all too focused on yours truly. As they should be.”

This was true, actually. People didn’t really pay any attention to Star, except in her person as Paulina’s satellite. Even Danny, before becoming Phantom and gaining a new perspective on life and the people in it, hadn’t.

“Besides,” continued Paulina, “now that we, well.” She didn’t quite blush. “You guys don’t suck as much as I thought you did.”

“Uh, thanks. You, too?”

Wow. That was quite possibly the worst response he could have had.

Paulina sighed heavily.

However, she was distracted from whatever she might have said to him by the first of the Hogwarts students coming in. Paulina turned her attention away, her eyes flicking from one set of green and silver highlights to the next. Whenever a student looked their way she smiled and waved, pouring on the charm.

Danny didn’t know how she did it. Social engineering was never going to be his strong point.

(Perhaps he could set Paulina and Star on the Minister of Magic’s trail. They might have more luck.)

Before he could follow the train of thought, they were surrounded. In a simply physical sense. There was no malice and very little aggression from the students that sat near them, more than one of whom had prefects badges. Still, Danny did have to fight down a knee-jerk reaction. He saw Paulina shift uncomfortably as well, and he gave her robe what he hoped was a steadying tug.

She returned it with a tight smile.

There wasn’t much time to talk before Professor McGonagall stood up with the hat and started calling names. Everyone went very quiet during the sorting, except for the cheer that rose with the hat’s every shout.

Then there was food. A lot of food. Most of it was recognizable, but some of it was sort of weird. Many things were pumpkin flavored. There was even something Danny was fairly certain was pumpkin juice.

He didn’t know how to feel about that.

Paulina took the time to engage in social engineering. Danny took the time to watch. They were both watched back, of course, but Paulina naturally drew more attention.

However, there was one boy who kept staring at Danny. He was about their age and had pale blonde hair. Really pale blonde hair.

(Danny had thought Star and Dash were blonde.)

“You’re Daniel Fenton, correct?” asked the boy.

“Um. Yes. And you are?”

“Draco Malfoy. I’m the fifth-year prefect.”

“Oh, Draco like the constellation?”

Draco blinked. “Yes.”

“Did your parents like astronomy a lot, then?”

“Astrology,” corrected Draco. “Astronomy is what muggles do.”

Danny carefully forced down the white-hot rage he felt at that statement. Yeah, he had more than a normal admiration for astronomy, and, therefore, a more intense than normal reaction to astronomy and astrology being confused, but magic was real, apparently, so maybe astrology wasn’t useless. Right. Yeah. And they were both about stars, planets, and space. Nothing to get mad at.

“It’s been a tradition in my mother’s family for generations,” Draco was saying, “although we occasionally make some allowances for other traditions. My mother’s name is Narcissa, for example. Is there anything similar in your family?”

“Dad’s side does ‘J’ names for the first born. Jazz got stuck with that.”

The boy’s eyebrows went up. “You have a sister? She isn’t magical?”

“Magical enough to haunt me,” said Danny.

“Pardon?”

“She died. She’s around here somewhere, though.” He gestured vaguely. “Didn’t want to be around big crowds. I think she said she was going to hang out with Myrtle?”

“Myrtle? Do you mean Moaning Myrtle? Who haunts the bathrooms?”

This time, the reaction Danny suppressed was a cringe, the emotion embarrassment on behalf of the young witch ghost. “She just introduced herself as Myrtle. Well, Myrtle Warren, but… Yeah. It’s kind of rude to describe someone as moaning, isn’t it?”

The boy puffed up, slightly, clearly offended.

Oh, dear.

The Americans were… interesting, Harry thought.

Ron and Hermione had sat near them as part of their ‘prefect duties,’ with Harry and therefore Ginny and Neville following after.

Well. That may have had more to do with curiosity than anything else.

They introduced themselves by their first names only. Dash, Valerie, and Sam. Dash was… well. Harry had encountered people like him both before and after coming to Hogwarts. For example, McClaggen. Harry hadn’t ever interacted much with McClaggen, even if they were in the same house, but Dash definitely gave off the same feeling. Meanwhile, Valerie just sort of glared at everyone, resisting all attempts at conversation while tearing at her food with extreme aggression. Sam had managed to engage Hermione and Katie Bell in a conversation about dark magic that was getting Hermione progressively more flustered.

Harry couldn’t tell if it was because of the misconceptions Sam had about magic in general, or because Sam seemed to think some kinds of dark magic should be legal.

He was starting to get a very bad feeling about these Americans.

“Hey,” whispered Tucker, while the students around them were distracted by something a rather round ghost was saying.

“What?” whispered Star.

“Is it just me, or is everyone here sort of depressed? Like, I can understand us being depressed, but…”

“No, no it’s not just you. Wasn’t there something about a student death? Some kind of freak accident.”

“Oh,” said the student sitting across from them. “You heard about Cedric.”

Danny wondered if he could get to the Minister of Magic through Dolores Umbridge. He hadn’t gotten a good read on her during their very brief encounters the previous week, but now... She gave off the impression of having some kind of political power. His understanding was that the headmaster had a lot of influence among the wizards and witches of this country, so for her to be interrupting him like that…

Or maybe he was like Danny and weak against social awkwardness.

Also, her speech seemed to have a deeper meaning he couldn’t decode. He didn’t understand wizarding culture or their political climate enough, despite his research.

Eh. He’d have to get a better grasp of her personality and position. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too hard. He did have a class with her.

“The events of last spring have left a mark on the whole school,” said Severus Snape into the muffled quiet of the Slytherin common room, his voice just barely more emotive than during the placement test he had given the Casper High students, “and no doubt on many of your home lives as well. I want you to know that if you have any… concerns… regarding the behaviors of fellow students or… more sensitive topics, you can come to me.”

The man blinked slowly at them.

“That is all,” he said, finally, and with an overly dramatic swish of his cloak he departed.

The room quickly filled with light chatter, students breaking off into little cliques, some of them slipping away down shadowy corridors.

Paulina tugged him towards one of those groups.

“Hi, Pansy,” she said, giving the girl a little wave, “hi, Draco. We were wondering if you guys could show us around? We were told our stuff would be moved here, but…” She trailed off, shrugging elegantly.

Danny tried to echo the movement.

He most likely did not succeed.

(It wasn’t like he could tell. His superpowers did not include seeing himself from the outside—Or maybe they did. There could be a spell for that, he supposed.)

He had to admit, as the prefects made a (just slightly supercilious) show of presenting the Slytherin dormitories to them, that he rather liked the space. It was surprisingly well-ventilated and warm, but there was still a general air of closeness, of security of bone-deep chill that spoke so well to his ghost half.

Of course, a lot of that would probably evaporate once Danny tried to sleep in a room with half a dozen strangers, but, well, he’d deal with that when he got there.

Magic was great and all, but Tucker would trade it all away in a second if only to get his PDA to work properly.

In the tent formed by his bedsheet and his body, Tucker hissed and rapped on the staticky screen, hoping an impact adjustment would do… something. He didn’t know what. The last three hadn’t done anything.

The way the metal casing was heating up under his hand was disturbing. Quickly, he thumbed the power button. He didn’t have a lot of these left, and he wanted to be able to use them to communicate with Danny and Sam. He missed their late-night Doom sessions.

(Along with everything else about his life in Amity Park. He at least had the power to make talking to his friends possible. The rest? Not so much.)

He groaned into his pillow. He’d been working on this off and on all week. Another night wouldn’t matter in the long run.

Maybe one of his classes would help him understand what he was doing wrong.

Sam had sort of enjoyed needling Hermione (the girl reminded her a lot of Jazz), even if she knew she shouldn’t, but the nasty fight between some of the fifth year boys in the common room had really ruined the mood. Hermione’s friend, Harry, was apparently some sort of celebrity. Like, in the same way Phantom had been a celebrity following Walker’s invasion.

So. Not really a great thing for him.

Ugh. Sympathy. Feelings. She sighed and stared up at the red and gold ceiling. If the color scheme didn’t do her in…

Danny met Jazz in the air over the school.

“I didn’t see you much today,” he said, twisting hands that he is keeping carefully transparent.

“Yeah,” said Jazz. “I’m just… I’m still adjusting. I think you’ll like Myrtle, by the way. She’s lonely, but fun. I think there might actually be a bit of ectoplasm in her, believe it or not.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She can flood the toilets, apparently. Although… I’m not sure if she meant the toilets themselves, or just the room in general.” She frowned. “Because she said something about sinks…” She shook her head. “Not important. Want to hear what she told me about the secret underground room and the giant snake skeleton? Not to mention all the other ridiculous stuff that’s happened here. If this is ‘safer,’ I don’t want to know what the rest of the wizarding world is like.”

“Like what happened in Amity, I guess,” said Danny. “But! Yes. Please tell me what you found out.”

Breakfast was nice. Especially when Sam, Danny, and Tucker compared schedules and realized that they had more classes together than they expected. Not with all three of them at once, but even just two of them together was better than nothing.

Yes, they got a lot of strange looks, especially when Jazz joined them. Evidently, eating breakfast with people from other houses just wasn’t done. Which was stupid, in Sam’s opinion. Actually, the whole house system felt increasingly stupid to Sam. She just didn’t understand the point. Was it for sports?

It was probably for sports. Sports were the root of all evil. Just look at Dash. He hadn’t had any sports for a whole Summer, and now he was acting like an actual decent human being.

Okay. That reasoning was suspect. Sam would have to come back to this when she was more awake. Early mornings were the worst.

Anyway. She had an acceptable breakfast with her friends and the people she’d grown to tolerate, then she set out to find History.

Which is how she overheard the conversation between Hermione and her friends.

“What’s S.P.E.W.?” she asked.

Hermione’s two friends glared at Sam. Probably for the sin of eating with people from another house. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“Well,” said Hermione, just slightly hesitant. “It’s the Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare…”

(Sam found a new cause to get incandescently angry about. Wizard society sucked.)

Harry was surprised to see five of the Americans, the three Gryffindors and the two Slytherins, standing by the door to Defense Against the Dark Arts, quietly talking to each other.

“What’re they doing, then?” asked Ron, scowling. “Consorting with the enemy?”

“Honestly, Ron,” said Hermione, rolling her eyes. “They aren’t the enemy. And they’re from the same place. It must be difficult, being so far away from home.”

Ron grunted and shrugged. “What d’you think Umbridge’ll be like, anyway?” he asked, changing the subject.

They filed into the classroom, the remainder of the class, including the Slytherins, their green looking horribly out of place amongst all the red trim, following shortly after. No one knew what Umbridge would be like, regarding punishment, so they didn’t want to immediately get on her bad side.

“Well,” she said, in a sickly-sweet tone, “good afternoon!”

There was a mumbled response.

Umbridge said “Tut, tut.” She actually said tut tut. Out loud. “That won’t do, now, will it? I should like you, please, to reply ‘Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge.’ One more time, please. Good afternoon, class!”

“Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge,” said the class, in something approaching unison and the least enthusiastic tone Harry had heard since Ron had tried to convince Hermione to help him with his Divination homework last year.

“There, now,” said Professor Umbridge. “That wasn’t too difficult, was it? Wands away and quills out, please.”

Many of the students exchanged gloomy or exasperated looks. Lessons without wands tended to be uninteresting, with very few exceptions.

(Instead of quills, the Americans produced pencils and pens from their bookbags.)

Umbridge opened her handbag and pulled out her own wand, which was as stubby as she was, and tapped the blackboard. Words appeared on the board at once: Defense Against the Dark Arts, A Return to Basic Principles.

Harry couldn’t quite repress a groan. Luckily, he wasn’t the only one.

“Well now, your teaching in this subject had been rather disrupted, hasn’t it?” stated Professor Umbridge. She turned to face the class, her eyes briefly lingering on Harry, and then the Americans. “Or completely nonexistent. The constant changing of teachers, many of whom do not seem to have followed any Ministry-approved curriculum, has unfortunately resulted in your being far below the standard we would expect to see in your O.W.L. year.

“You will be pleased to know, however,” she continued, still acting like she was talking to kindergarteners, “that these problems are now to be rectified. We will be following a carefully structured, theory-centered, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic this year.”

Each word Umbridge spoke made Harry’s heart drop farther. How could Dumbledore let this woman teach them? This year? When knowing how to fight dark magic was more important than ever?

Umbridge rapped the board again, and new words appeared. Course aims: 1. Understanding the principles underlying defensive magic. 2. Learning to recognize situations in which defensive magic can legally be used. 3. Placing the use of defensive magic in a context for practical use.

Oh. This year was going to be bad. As for the day, it got worse when Umbridge assigned a reading from what had to be the dullest book Harry had ever read. Including that one time—No. Focus.

He massaged his temples and wondered if he needed to get a new prescription for his glasses. The words on the page refused to stay sharp.

Harry looked up when the Americans started to whisper among themselves and caught sight of one of the most shocking things he had ever witnessed: Hermione not reading.

Soon, everyone was staring either at Hermione or the Americans, who had left off whispering after some pointed glaring from Umbridge but had replaced the whispers with passionate gesturing at something in the back of the book. Those, too, died down after a while, in favor of looking at Hermione.

Eventually, Umbridge could no longer ignore the situation.

“Did you want to ask something about the chapter, dear?”

“Not about the chapter, no.”

“Well, we’re reading just now.” Umbridge smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “If you have other queries, we can deal with them at the end of class.”

“I’ve got a query about your course aims,” said Hermione, undeterred.

“And your name is—?”

“Hermione Granger.”

“Well, Miss Granger, I think the course aims are perfectly clear if you read them through carefully.”

“Well, I don’t. There’s nothing written up there about using defensive spells.”

“There’s nothing in the book about using spells, either!” said the Slytherin boy, waving his copy angrily. “There aren’t even any of the, um.” He paused and looked at Sam for a second.

“Incantations,” said Sam. “I mean, that’s what I’d call them? I don’t know the official term.”

Umbridge inhaled through her teeth.

“Using defensive spells?” she asked, voice pitched unnaturally high. “Why, I can’t imagine any situation arising in my classroom that would require you to use a defensive spell, Miss—”

“And what about outside of the classroom?” interrupted the Slytherin boy.

“Like, this is supposed to teach us how to not die, right?” asked the girl next to him, examining her fingernails.

“You have to practice self-defense to actually get good at it,” agreed Valerie, crossing her arms. “What’s the point of this class if we’re not going to actually learn how to do stuff?”

“Yes,” agreed Hermione, “surely the whole point of Defense Against the Dark Arts is to practice defensive spells?”

“Students,” gritted Umbridge, “will raise their hands when they wish to speak in my class.”

At once, a dozen hands went up.

“Miss Granger?” Umbridge asked, voice dangerous.

“Isn’t the whole point of Defense Against the Dark Arts to practice defensive spells?”

“Miss Granger,” said Umbridge. “As you are not a Ministry-trained educational expert, you are not qualified to decide what the ‘whole point’ of this, or any, class is. Wizards much older and cleverer than you have—”

“I really doubt that,” interjected Ron.

Umbridge took another deep breath. “You will be learning about defensive spells in a secure, risk-free way—”

“What’s the use of that?” demanded Harry, loudly. “If we’re going to be attacked, it won’t be in a—”

“Hand, Mr. Potter!”

Predictably, Umbridge turned her back on him as soon as he thrust his fist into the air. Instead, she called on Dean Thomas.

(The part of Harry’s brain that wasn’t vibrating in frustration noted that the Americans were passing notes between each other.)

“Well, it’s like Harry said, isn’t it?” he asked, once she had gotten done with interrogating him about his name. “If we’re going to be attacked, it won’t be risk-free—”

“Do you expect to be attacked in class?”

Harry was very tempted to say yes, considering that three of his four previous DADA teachers had wound up attacking him.

… Did Professor Lupin’s werewolf form having a go at him bring the count up to four?

Umbridge talked over Dean. “I do not wish to criticize the way things have been run in this school,” she said, with the air of someone who was about to do just that, “but you have been exposed to some very irresponsible wizards in this class, very irresponsible indeed—not to mention,” she gave a nasty little laugh, “extremely dangerous half-breeds.”

The Slytherin boy stood up, chair scraping across the floor. Sam, next to him, had gone pale. Her fingers were wrapped tightly around her wand.

“Sit down, Mr.-?”

“I’m leaving,” said the boy, not deigning to give Umbridge his name. He picked up his bag. “Maybe I can sit in on an actually useful lesson. I mean, if I can figure out how to make a pineapple tap dance, I can get it to fly into someone’s face. At least that’s something.”

“Sit down,” repeated Umbridge. “I do not know what your classmates have told you, but you, all of you,” she said to the class, “have been frightened into believe that you are likely to meet Dark attacks every other day—”

“We haven’t been frightened into believing anything!” exclaimed Dash, also rising from his seat. “Our entire city was attacked! We need—"

“Which was a tragedy. One that is unlikely to be repeated! Now, sit down.”

The other Americans stood up.

“We heard about Cedric Diggory, you know,” said the Slytherin girl, coldly. “And a lot of the people who attacked us were never caught.”

“We also know about the giant murder snake that apparently lived here,” said the boy.

“I, for one, can’t believe that wizards are less likely to be murders than any other human,” said Valerie. “If normal people need to take self-defense classes, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to.”

“The government preventing people from learning how to defend themselves is historically a bad sign,” said Sam. “Of course, slavery is also a bad sign, and you all have been ignoring that for God only knows how long. There are actual slaves in this school.”

“Wait,” said the Slytherin boy, horrified. “Are you serious? Is that what you were talking about before? Oh my God—"

“Children!” exclaimed Umbridge. “Your hands are not up.”

The looks Umbridge got after that outburst were filled with incredulity, not

Parvati Patil raised her hand.

“Yes?” asked Umbridge.

Harry was beginning to wonder if she was looking for punishment.

“Isn’t there supposed to be a practical bit in our Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L.?”

“As long as you have studied the theory hard enough, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to—”

The room exploded into a flurry of objections, spurred on by the Americans.

“Who exactly do you think is going to attack you?” shouted Umbridge over the ruckus.

“I don’t know!” shouted Harry back, even though part of him knew this was a bad idea. “How about Lord Voldemort?”

Silence.

“Ten points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter?”

“Points?” whispered Dash. No one else spoke.

The Slytherin boy was looking at Harry with something like hunger in his eyes.

“Now, let me make a few quite plain. You have been told that a certain Dark wizard had returned from the dead—”

“He wasn’t dead,” said Harry, “but yeah, he’s returned!”

“Do not make matters worse for yourself, Mr. Potter!” exclaimed Umbridge shrilly. “As I was saying, you have been informed that a certain Dark wizard is at large once again. This is a lie.”

“It is NOT a lie! I saw him! I fought him!”

Glee spread across Umbridge’s toad-like face. “Detention, Mr. Potter. Tomorrow evening. Five— What do you think you’re doing?”

“Um,” said the Slytherin boy, who like the rest of the Americans was halfway to the door. “Leaving. Like we said?” He hadn’t stopped walking.

“You will do no such thing! All five of you will be joining Mr. Potter for detention.”

“Pass.” His eyes flicked towards Harry again.

“Excuse me?”

“We have better things to do than humor someone who’s refusing to do their job,” said Sam.

The classroom doors slammed shut right in front of the Slytherin boy’s nose, and he took half a step back.

“Tomorrow evening, at five o’clock, all six of you will join me for detention in my office. Now. The rumors of that Dark wizard’s return are lies. The Ministry guarantees that you are not in danger from any Dark wizard. If you are still worried, if someone is alarming you with fibs about reborn Dark wizards, come see me outside of class hours, I would like to hear about it. I am here to help. I am your friend. Now, kindly, continue your reading. Page five, ‘Basics for Beginners.’”

The Americans slunk back to their seats but pulled a variety of colorful transfiguration textbooks from their bags instead of Defensive Magical Theory.

With an air of triumph, Umbridge sat down behind her desk.

Harry stood up.

“Harry, no!” whispered Hermione, tugging at his sleeve.

Harry ignored her. (Which was, in all honesty, a stupid move. Ignoring Hermione rarely had positive consequences.)

(In his defense, the preceding several minutes had been… stressful.)

“So, according to you, Cedric Diggory dropped dead of his own accord, did he?”

“Cedric Diggory’s death was a tragic accid—”

“Just like Amity Park, huh?”

“A tragic accident,” continued Umbridge, voice full of ice.

“It was murder.” Harry was shaking. He felt like he was under a spotlight, and he wanted to be anywhere but here, talking about this. “Voldemort killed him, and you know it.”

For a second, Harry thought Umbridge would start screaming, but instead her lips curled up into a parody of a smile. “Come here, Mr. Potter, dear.”

As Harry walked forward, Umbridge started scribbling on a small, pink, piece of paper, angled so that Harry couldn’t see what she was writing. Something moved out of the corner of his eye, and Harry flinched.

The… What were they even doing? Why were they sitting like that?

“Take this to Professor McGonagall, dear,” said Umbridge, holding out a roll of pink paper.

Harry took it from her without a word, turned on his heel, threw open the door, and—

Was almost trampled by the Americans all escaping the room at once.

Dash grabbed him by the upper arm, and soon all six of them were running down the hallway. It took several seconds for Umbridge to start shrieking, and, by that point, the Slytherin boy had pulled them all into a secret passage that someone who hadn’t been at Hogwarts for even a month shouldn’t know about.

“Wow,” said Sam. “You work fast, Danny.”

“Thanks,” said Danny, giving her a thumbs up. “Got to thank the Bloody Baron, though.” He paused. “Still can’t believe that’s his actual name…”

“Sorry about dragging you with us, by the way,” said the Slytherin girl. “I’m Paulina. This is Danny. You already know these three, I think?”

“Er,” said Harry, not at all sure how to deal with this situation. Part of him just wanted to shout. He was still vibrating with suppressed rage.

“I didn’t really catch your name in all that, though,” she continued, gesturing behind them.

“It’s Harry. Potter.”

It was… interesting, how his name didn’t spark any recognition in them. At least not at first. Then Danny stiffened and—

“The poltergeist is coming this way,” he said, mildly.

“You can tell?” asked Paulina.

“I could always tell. Why do you think I was always in the bathroom when ghosts were around?”

Valerie scowled, and shot a truly venomous glare at her watch.

“Do you think we can convince him to bug Umbridge?” asked Sam.

Danny shot a look of surprise at her. Then he smiled. “Maybe,” he said. He turned back to Harry. “It was nice meeting you. I hope we can talk again sometime. It sounds like you’ve been through a lot, and, well…” He shrugged.

Harry suddenly remembered that the Americans were here, for the most part, because their families were dead.

“But you should probably track down Professor McGonagall sooner than later. I’d bet that Umbridge put a timer on that. If that’s possible. Is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry, suddenly a hundred times more anxious about the paper clenched in his hand.

“Gosh, imagine if Lancer could do that,” said Dash.

“I’d take Lancer any day,” said Danny. “He actually tried to teach stuff. Anyway, I’m going to go head off Peeves. You might want to go around. I hear he can be kind of a jerk?”

“Right,” said Harry, walking further down the secret passage, because he had been here for a proper length of time and had learned about it properly.

… Although he supposed that asking the ghosts was a proper way to go about learning the secret passages.

No, he had to focus on how to explain getting kicked out of class to Professor McGonagall, not on the weirdest interaction with Slytherins he’d had to date.

#danny phantom #harry potter #fic #gift fic #prize #winner

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a-monsters-love · 4 years

Note

Hi!! I know this is super dramatic but I was wondering if you’d be willing to write some ✨angst✨ Maybe Todoroki, Hawks, Bakugo Midoriya (take your pick if that’s too many) reacting to their s/o taking a particularly bad hit for them? Enough to knock them out of a fight. If you needed an idea for a quirk, maybe a short burst teleportation quirk? Just an idea! Thanks for taking the time to read this! 🖤

Oh man, I love drama but let’s see if I know how to write angst, and I LOVE THAT QUIRK IDEA. I had a similar idea for a fic that’s been pinned until I get ✨inspiration✨ aND HERE WE ARE. Also thank you so much for the request and for being so polite 💛

The idea I had was inspired by Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck-It-Ralph, like a glitch quirk. I’m gonna make the 1-A boys pro hero’s for this because it’s so much more work to do it while they’re still in school, I’m cutting Izuku cause I can’t see anything but crying or our feral child in the latest update and oh man it hurts too much.

These are a fraction shorter than I would’ve liked them to be however i wrote them on my phone so they looked longer lmao

——————

[Master List]

Todoroki Shoto:

Hours. It’s been hours since this fight had begun, or so it felt like. You were panting heavily, Shoto watched you stand your ground firmly. You took a deep meditative breath, you smiled softly at him and glitched. You appeared on a window ledge behind the steel villain and went in to distract him while Shoto went to work. He looked around and noticed you were cornering the villain where less civilians were around. The villain turned as if to attack you but made a quick action to attack Shoto off guard, you glitched towards your husband to stop the steel needles from impacting him. “(Y/N)!” He screamed, your hand was so close but the world went black.

Shoto watched as several thick steel needles pierced through your body, you smiled softly at him and you eyes closed before you hit the ground. Tears sizzled before they could run down his cheeks, he saw red and froze the villain quickly. He didn’t care about the repercussions, he didn’t care what would happen, all he wanted was for you to be alive at the end of the day.

He sat there with you in his arms as blood pooled around the two of you staining your respective uniforms. A medic removed you from his arms and he followed silently. He didn’t say anything in the ambulance, he didn’t say anything while you were in surgery, he didn’t say anything as you were transferred to a hospital room.

Days that passed turned into weeks before you opened your eyes, when you did you see his bi-colored hair as he slept snuggled into your arm leaned onto your hospital bed. You smiled softly and pet his hair with you opposing hand, a deep breath leaves you. Shoto stirs and rubs his eyes as he sits up, his left side lights aflame as his emotions run wild. “Hey.” You said, your voice was scratchy and muffled from the oxygen mask.

“Hey.” His voice shook as sat up, he clutched your hand in his and squeezed it lightly. “(Y/N)- I- you can’t…” His words hitched in his throat.

You sighed and smiled softly again, “I’m sorry, Sho.” Tears left your eyes, you couldn’t imagine how he must feel. “My body just-“ Moved on its own, you chuckled softly at the thought.

He chuckled getting the point of what you were going to say, he kissed your forehead softly. “Try not to do that again…” He nearly whispered the words, you could felt him shaking. You couldn’t promise you wouldn’t do it again, but you could promise to try.

Takami Keigo (Hawks):

You didn’t know how he could flirt while fighting, at first sure it was cute and sure you love him but, “Hawks! Is this really the time?” You tried not to hiss at him blushing in embarrassment and frustration.

He gave his award winning smile, “Of course, Angel! How else am I supposed to keep up morale?” You snorted at his comment and rolled your eyes.

“Focus, Birdy.” You jumped out of the way before colliding with cement being thrown at you. You glitched towards the villain before he could touch the ground again, as soon as you reformed in front of him your stomach felt hot. You coughed up blood and looked down. You materialized into the villains knife, looking back at your boyfriend a tear streamed down your cheek. “Focus…” Your voice was almost a whisper as your body fell towards the earth.

“DOVE!” His cry was almost a screech. Keigo’s eyes narrowed as he sent the last of his feathers towards you to soften your landing. “THAT’S ENOUGH.” He charged towards the villain but your words echoed in his mind ‘focus’. Hawks retrieved his longest feathers that now dripped with your blood, he saw red but kept hearing your words. He made quick work incapacitating the villain before rushing to find you. You’d already been taken into an ambulance and ushered off to the emergency room.

Keigo paced enough to wear a trench into the ground while you were in surgery. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as the surgery sign turned off. He was told to rest by a nurse but refused until he saw you.

You slept for a few days before waking up, when you did he was staring at you wide eyed. He was surprised to see you awake but gods was he relieved. He wore what one might consider pajamas, his sweatpants were pulled up to his knees, his shirt and sweater were disheveled. He had dark heavy bags under his eyes the indicated he wasn’t handling you being out very well. “Angel..” He spoke softly.

You smiled and winced painfully as you adjusted, Keigo stood quickly to help you adjust the lift in the bed. “Hey Birdy..” You coughed out, “You look like hell.”

He rubbed his face and snorted, “Dove. Is this really the time?” He was grateful you could make jokes even while on deaths doorsteps.

You smirked, “How else am I supposed to keep up the morale?” You teased, quoting his comment the day of the fight. You both chuckled softly before silent set in. “I’m sorry Kei, I should’ve been paying more attention.” Your hand grazed over your newest scar.

Keigo goes to say something with a smile but it quickly drops, he looks at his hands as they shake. “I… I don’t know what I would’ve done with out you…” He glances up at you with misty eyes. “Don’t scare me like that, (Y/N)…”

Guilt sets in your stomach as tears well in your own eyes, “I didn’t mean to-“ You reached out your arms and he climbed into the hospital bed beside you. You pet his hair until he fell asleep, you both knew this was part of being a hero but this was the last thing you wanted.

Bakugo Katsuki:

Just once, just once you’d like to have a normal date with your boyfriend. Sure, you’re both hero’s and sure, it’s not like villains had a schedule you could follow and plan around. Fuck, just once you’d love if King Murder Explosion himself would just let other hero’s handle things themselves.

You glitched around the street collecting and moving civilians, “Ground Zero, the western street is clear!” You shout up to him.

A smirk grows on his lips as he follows your lead, blasting the villain to the street you cleared. You start clearing the surrounding streets as you knew how your boyfriend was, blasty boi couldn’t avoid making a bigger mess than needed. “COME ON! SCARED?” He chided with the villain, edging him on.

The oversized criminal threw an empty car towards Katsuki who blasted it to the ground. Things being thrown and blasted back and fourth continued for a moment when you heard a cry for help. A child, you thought. You look back at the two fighting and glitched towards the sound, you teleported between rubble slowly finding your way to them. “Hey… it’s gonna be alright.” You said in a hushed toned as you found their little hand, glitching them into your arms. “Hey- Hi kiddo, I’m here now.” You pet their hair as the sobbed silently, trekking back to safety.

You could only glitch one person at a time safely, the last thing you needed was to glitch a possibly injured child into having a seizure. “(Y/N)!” You heard Katsuki shout, “LOOK OUT!!” He howled, you looked back too slow and glitched the child to safety.

By the time your quirk confirmed they had materialized safely you were struck in the head with a large chunk on concrete. Everything was dizzying and then black, “Suki..” You mumbled as you hit the ground.

The next explosion was loud, aggressive. Katsuki hadn’t seen that much rage since high school. After everything that happened and then meeting you, you the woman he wanted to marry, gods he saw red. He debilitated the villain in a series of large blasts, bellowing for medics who arrived at the scene. He screamed at them to hurry up and help you, screamed until he was sure it was burned in their brains before fizzling.

The world had never seemed so silent, everything ached. Everything was dull and lifeless as he waited for you to wake up. They claimed you’d be fine, Recovery Girl had come to see you. Now was just a waiting game, Katauki’s patience was thin but he’d wait for you for the rest of his life.

You woke that evening to quiet bickering, you can hear Katsuki on the phone. You assumed it was Kirishima, you smirked thinking about how much your boyfriend has calmed down in the passed years. “No, I couldn’t ask her! You really think I had the time? We’re in the fuCKING HOSPITAL!” He hissed.

You hummed, “..Suki?” You ask, he disconnects the line as soon as he heard your voice and walks over to your bed.

“Why didn’t you teleport to safety?” He jeered.

You sigh and look at the ceiling, “I had a child with me, I couldn’t.” You rubbed your eyes and looked at him. His gaze softened and he sat down.

He sighed and pressed his face into both of his palms, “Today was supposed to be fucking special, I always fuck this shit up.” You hummed in curiosity, a blush crept up his ears.

“Everyday is special with you, Suki. Stop being so hard on yourself.” You chuckle softly.

He looks up and rests his chin on one of his hands, the other reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small velvety box, “That’s not what I meant...” He huffed and handed you the box.

You sat up awkwardly and took the box, opening it to see a ring set. It was simple but it fit the two of you, tears bubbles up in your eyes. “Katsuki-“ Your voice hitched in your throat and he slouched back in his seat while ruffling his hair. “Of course, oh my god-“ The two of you chuckled and you reached out for him to come closer, you pressed your lips to his for a chaste kiss. “So, who’s idea was it to make you do all the extra frivolousness?” You snort at him and he shot up.

He growled slightly ruffling his hair aggressively, “I KNEW YOU DIDN’T NEED ALL THAT SHIT.” You burst into laughter and groaned at the ache in your head, maybe you could get a day from him to go on a date.

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heffrondriving · 2 years

Note

I'm sorry if this is a little assholely but after seeing your vent post I went looking for where you said to not tag names and the only place I saw it was at the end of your very long tags,, so assuming i didnt miss another more obvious place...? Have you thought of just putting that in the post itself? Because anyone who's seeing it second hand (as in seeing it after someone else rebloged it) won't see that tag + not everyone reads tags, you know :( sorry that it makes you uncomfortable but if you put it somewhere more visible, like in the body of the post, then at least people def will see it. Sending love either way 💕

nahhh nothing to be sorry for issall totally cool and encouraged and you are very kind,, tbh i was lowkey waiting around for something like this and i'm kinda glad for it and also surprised it's not at least fifty times worse??? in all honesty i think i am in dire need and deserving of the hardest dose of criticism at this point for all the stupid messy personal posts i make on a sleep-deprived whim, as i am fully aware that this is not the place for it, and i am and should never be exempt from getting my necessary comeuppance should it arise. and like i said, this quandary was completely of my own fault. i have made my stance on personal comfort posts clear numerous times before and only put them in subtler places like the end of my annoying-ass rambly tags because i really don't wanna bother people with something that sounds so trivially inconsequential, and it makes me incredibly anxious to add them in the post itself (as i reckon it just outright ruins the whole content and that's such a selfish and gross thing for me to do personally,, like who tf am i to ask anything of anyone ech :-/). but this is still my sole responsibility to properly handle and conduct myself online, and i'm so sorry if i came across like i'm attempting to pass the blame for my own self-implicated neglect, as no one else should be subject to dealing with my mistakes. (like no joke i screamed aloud when i read that you looked through my posts or tags??? PLS LICHRALLY NEVER DO THAT EVER THAT'S A VV BAD IDEA ACTUAL ONLINE EQUIVALENT OF DUMPSTER DIVING VIBES EXCEPT THE DUMPSTER'S ON FIRE AND CAUSES MAJOR BRAINROTOFFISITIS!!!!! (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`))

i've had a well-needed rest hrk composed myself, deleted my prev post (i'm also thinking of removing the post that spurred it just to be sure, t'was super terrible anyway lmao), and muted my notifs for the time being, so please do feel free to tag anything however you wish at this point—i know i'm making an absolute fool out of myself for this full 180 departure (just in time for april 1st tho so swings and roundabouts-) but yeah that's completely fine idk, and if my walnut brain has anything otherwise to say abt it they will be catching These Hands according to the Fists Of Fury Code!!!!! ᕦ(ò皿óᕦ) but in all seriousness, emotional dysregulation is the absolute worst but i understand that maybe i can't really set boundaries for something fully well out of my control, so i just give up the ghost on this bc what else is there to do. c'est la vie if it sucks for me, tough shit @ self tough it out bebs u asked for this :^) though i hopefully can, however, keep everything else out of sight and out of mind so that i don't have to deal with the self-imposed repercussions by willingly setting my triggers off and lashing out incessantly. like mmm that's toxic shit girlie no one wants that here bls get u some therapy pare *whaps myself with an abaniko fan*. it's 100% on me if i choose to expand the tags on my notifs, and what happens in other ppl's blogs should be none of my fucking business and i'm just a super nosy lurker goblin sometimes ig exhibit a: this is what being a chronic cave hermit does to the human psyche. irreversible damage u.......*steven he voice* EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!!!!! my sincerest apologies again for all the trouble and i really hope this answer doesn't come off as too sardonic or acerbic or anything of the sort, i know i goof a lot but i really do mean all of it, even if trying to convey appropriate tone indication in text form is so whack 😩

also i'm really sorry for this mf ten-volume novel series of an answer (i really hope no one's insane enough to actually read this....whatever the hell this is .-.). thank you so much for your patience and understanding, and please keep the love and give it to another funky cool blog who's worthy of it and not deserving of getting squished like a pestilent vermin under your steel-toed bootheel!! /lh ~(இ௰இ~) anywayyy let's ignore (slash unfollow hardblock permanent dni etc. etc....very good ideas, those, bc if i could block myself i would without hesitation smh get this chernobyl elephant's foot outta my feed) this and my other inane bullshittery and let bygones be bygones and go back to our silly manband content, shall we??? this blog is for no-braincell shits and pure dumbassery first and foremost i promise......also i have more poorly-made sh!tposts and kendall's pretty grampa face stuff which i wanna plague the btr tag with if that's still allowed pls ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

(^^^ i can't believe i actually got to use this gif for something sdjsfjksd)

#tbh i'm genuinely shocked i'm not getting more hatemail at this point (this is an implicit urge to action!) bc lawd gawd i am obnoxious??#you know when you say things and the moment it leaves your mouth you instantly know that you fucked up??? that is me all the time #i have zero filter and it gets the best of me and i just really need ppl to tell me to shut tf up so this is good. more of this is good #i'll delete this too just so it wouldn't clutter up the feed i'm so sorry ahh ;-;#full disclosure there was another ask regarding this matter that i never answered bc it got washed out of my slow braim and by the time i #remembered it felt too uncomfortably late to respond yk so. i hope this could be some kinda reparation #fr why do i look forward to getting slammed down;;; watching me get my ass kicked is cathartic ngl. painful and tr//um//tic but still >:3 #this is what u get allen!!! hoshit here comes the undertaker with a folding chair ready to body avalanche the weak spine outta u hofuckk #i'm rambling nonsense in tags again when this answer already has no right being this long sorry drank too much coffee fushfuahj #anon #all the windows down #do pretty girl don't speak

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florrickandassociates · 3 years

Text

TGF Thoughts: 5x03-- And the court had a clerk...

Hello again! It’s nice to have this show back. This episode was a bit less of a standout than the previous two, but I’m still happy with the overall direction for this season. More under the cut (or here, because tumblr sucks).

When Robert King tweeted the episode title, I asked him if all the titles this season were adding up to one long sentence/story, hoping he’d confirm it and give a little more information. He did! He said it’s “in the Farmer in the Dell mode” and while I think I get what he’s saying, I’m very curious to see how it plays out. Haven’t been able to track down 5x04′s title yet, but the promo is out. (As of this morning! It’s interesting they’re not putting them after the episode this year; I kind of like it.)

Kurt’s job is up in the air given the new administration. I think this scene exists mostly just to remind us where Kurt works and the stakes.

What month is this supposed to be in? The transition seems recent but no one is wearing masks.

Kurt spots a poster asking for help ID’ing people at the Capitol on January 6th. He thinks he recognizes someone...

And now we’re in case of the week land. This case is about a small business owner whose business went under after someone created fake news articles accusing him of pedophilia.

I think the whole point of this (kind of long) scene is to show that this case is a pretty small deal. Low stakes, inexperienced opposing lawyer. (Not even sure why Liz would be arguing this in court, but whatever.)

Tbh I thought this was going to wind up in 9 ¾ court.

Now that we have junior level characters, we get scenes showing that there are, in fact, people at RBL who are mid-level. Liz asks an associate to work on something, he asks another associate to work on it, she delegates to other associates, and they delegate to Marissa and Carmen. This work seems terrible.

It’s so funny to me how this is probably more realistic than most of the lawyering on the show and yet it only shows up selectively. We only see the hierarchy here to make it clear that Marissa and Carmen are at the bottom.

David Lee interrupts and asks for Carmen. He’s very rude to her. Interestingly, she’s hesitant to leave her grunt work and follow David, even though she must know he outranks the associate who gave her the grunt work.

“Why am I supposed to know you?” David asks her as they walk through the halls. “I don’t know if you are,” Carmen responds. “Why does Benjamin Dafoe know you?” he asks. She doesn’t know who he is.

“Who are you?” Dafoe asks when Carmen enters. She states her name, again. “Why are you important?” he asks. “I don’t think that I am,” Carmen responds.

Then Dafoe says his top client, and it’s a name that the characters all know. I’m glad this scene is free of any “he’s the white OJ” expository lines (that’s from Sweeney’s introduction) -- it’s clear from the reactions and the discussion of police and rape that the top client is a bad guy, probably a rapist. The rapist wants Carmen to represent him.

Putting 2 and 2 together, Carmen asks if the rapist knows Rivi. He’s not, but he’s at the same prison. As soon as Carmen says she’s representing Rivi, David Lee switches gears, understanding the situation and trying to sign the new business. He’s so shameless!

Marissa sorts ALL the papers. There are a LOT of papers. I’m swamped. Look at all this paper.

She catches the associate who assigned her the task leaving for the night just as she finishes up, and cheerfully notes she’s finished the task. Then the associate mentions this was only half of the bills. Marissa does not like that. Since her goal in wanting to be a lawyer is mostly just to give her something exciting to do and earn respect... this hierarchy thing is not going so well.

Marissa decides that after her rough day, she’s going to stop by Wackner’s court. He’s in the middle of a case about Emily in Paris fanfiction and he’s very happy to see Marissa.

Wackner’s night court has a program—it notes the sponsor is Copy Co-op (I thought it was Copy Coop?) and the paper products were also provided by them. And “there will be regular intermissions at the discretion of Judge Wackner.” It’s very theatrical.

Wackner takes a recess and calls Marissa to his “chambers.” He asks for her thoughts on the case. “All they want is attention and to feel like they’ve won,” Marissa notes. Wackner’s on the same wave length and compares it to the Scarecrow’s diploma at the end of The Wizard of Oz. So, he makes copyright certificates and some minor modifications to each of the fanfic books. They say “I respect you and I love you” and that’s that.

Wackner catches Marissa before she leaves and asks her to be his law clerk—part time or full time, 10% of all the legal filings and unlimited use of copy machines. She is hesitant because she “doesn’t even know what this is.”

Wackner says his court is “the future.” Marissa turns him down; notes she wants to pass the bar. “You know why all these people are here? ‘Cause the courts and the lawyers and the appeals have made justice... unattainable. Out of reach. To anyone who doesn’t have a shitload of money to wait it out. That’s why Exxon beats out Mr. Nobody. Read Kafka’s Before the Law.”

I just read it, and you should too! It literally is a page, but tl;dr, there’s a man who wants to get to the law and instead he spends his whole life trying to win over the first of many gatekeepers on the path to the law. He never gets through the gate.

“Justice is only just if it’s available to everyone,” Wackner says. Marissa thinks about that.

As I said last week, it’s smart that Wackner makes so much sense. Hearing him say all this, knowing that it’s true... it makes it very easy to get on board with the thought experiment. Of course there would be huge repercussions to this kind of system, but it makes so much sense it’s compelling TV!

Kurt’s showering when Diane gets home, which gives her time to stumble across the WANTED poster and notice that Kurt has drawn facial hair onto one of the pictures. “Who is this?” she asks him. “No one,” he says. “Well, you drew in a beard and a moustache on him,” Diane notes. Kurt says he was doodling, but Diane calls him out as he is the “exact opposite of a doodler.” Kurt says he thought it was someone he knew, but he’s not sure. Diane pushes him to tell the feds. Kurt reiterates he’s not sure, but it’s someone he went shooting with. “Oh my God, then it’s him,” Diane jumps to (not incorrect) conclusions. Kurt says he didn’t talk that way; he’s a veteran. “Kurt! That’s the profile!” Diane argues. Kurt isn’t convinced and he doesn’t want to be responsible for naming names. He notes he’ll be threatened with indictment for not naming names and then only lawyers will end up benefitting. Diane is not convinced.

I think this is an interesting conflict for Kurt and Diane. I understand why Kurt is hesitant to speak out before he’s sure. And I understand and agree with Diane that it’s important to identify the attackers and prevent anything like that from happening again.

I don’t mean to blame Kurt, exactly, but I feel like all of what happens next could’ve played out differently if Kurt had been just a little clearer with Diane about why he was hesitant to ID the man. Like, the threat of indictment for not naming names sounds like some typical anti-government rambling. Saying you specifically are afraid that this will turn back on you and you need to weigh your options and come up with a plan first would put Diane in a very different mode, in which they’d work together to craft the best strategy. Because this man would’ve been ID’d by someone, sooner or later, and Kurt would’ve needed to be prepared.

Diane stares at the wanted poster at work and asks Jay to find his identity. He’s on the FBI TEN MOST WANTED? Ten!? Ok!

Diane shares the extra information she has—the gun range and that he’s a veteran—and Jay gets to work.

Turns out there’s no money in the case that Liz, a name partner, is working on and Marissa just spent all those hours sorting bills for. I could’ve told you there was no money in that case lol.

Jay IDs the guy very fast. He’s faster than the feds because they didn’t know where he shot. The range had his license on file, and Jay got ahold of it.

“Well, we don’t pay you enough,” Diane says. “Oh, I know that,” Jay laughs.

Diane says she’s going to think about calling the feds—it's definitely the same guy.

Marissa notes someone high profile (David Cord, who I presume is a thinly veiled stand-in for David Koch given the name, his role in the plot, and the fact that he is “David Cord of the Cord Brothers”) in the lobby giving a fake name and goes to tell Liz.

David Cord is performing magic tricks for the receptionists (they don’t recognize him) when Liz and Marissa show up. “I knew your father. I hated your father,” Cord says. “Yes, well, he hated you too,” Liz says. He says he gave a fake name to see what the reception would be like since he’s kinda infamous.

Liz introduces Marissa as one of the law clinic lawyers. Marissa knows what to say in this situation. Specifically, she knows that it is the exact right moment to name drop her father.

“Democrats as far as the eye can see,” Cord notes. At that, Liz asks Marissa to get Julius involved.

More good expository work! (No, editor feature of Word, I do NOT want that to say “Better expository work,” that would change my meaning, go away and please stop grading my recap??? I don’t know how I brought this up but it’s telling me my score is 72%, so a C, and it’s driving me crazy. Oh, now I’m a 71%. It had me at like, 50%, because I had written “Wackner” and “Wackner” is not a word. No shit.)

Anyway, back to the exposition. I like that we don’t get a line like, “Liz! David Cord, the Republican super donor, is here!” We just get to see Liz’s reaction, Cord’s hate of Liz’s father, and the line about democrats. Then it becomes clearer who Cord is.

Just noticed Liz is wearing an Apple Watch.

Liz stands for her meeting with Cord, likely to maintain power. Cord says January 6th changed everything to him and now he’s all about unity and loving America.

Cord has something to say about Liz’s case, the one that’s not making any money, and he seems to know quite a lot about it. That spooks Liz.

Then Cord offers her $12 million to continue the case for another six months (all of these months, seemingly, will play out in the couple of days the rest of this episode takes, but, whatever). He just wants them to go after the social media company that distributed the fake news... and Section 230.

Don’t know what that is? Now you do, because there is a Good Fight short! These work so much better when they’re actually needed (explaining concepts, etc.) than when they’re trying to force one into every episode (remember that Downton Abbey one? What... was that?)

I was talking to @mimeparadox about this short and he pointed out that this short has a VERY clear POV on an issue that actually doesn’t seem to be all that straightforward. If you’re like me and only had a vague sense of what Section 230 was prior to this episode, this short is telling you what to think of it—it isn’t just explaining what it is.

I do tend to agree with the show’s POV on most things, but this is an issue I’d like to read more on. I love how Section 230 was something I hadn’t really read up on prior to this episode and now that it’s been on TGF I realize it’s something that actually, yes, I would’ve been interested in knowing about earlier. Is this because things that are on TGF are interesting to me because they’re on TGF or is it because TGF generally only discusses things that would be interesting to me? Probs a little bit of both.

Diane asks Jay how to make an anonymous phone call and he hands her a burner phone. She calls the FBI with the rioter’s name. She doesn’t leave her name and then she dumps the phone.

Credits! Did you catch there’s a Jordan Boatman in the credits? She plays one of the associates who passes down the grunt work to Marissa, and she’s Michael Boatman’s daughter in real life! She’s also been in one other episode, in season 3.

I never get tired of these credits!

The RL partners (and some associates who are on the case? I think these are the same ones who delegated the work to Marissa?) debate whether or not they should take Cord’s money. Madeline notes that he’s funded a lot of Republican campaigns; Julius notes that both Republicans and Democrats agree that Section 230 is flawed and this is an opportunity for unity.

Diane notes that the right doesn’t want to stop conspiracy theories from spreading, so is this really that bipartisan? “It would help if the boomers would stop falling for those conspiracy theories and sharing it with their friends,” an associate (I believe this is Michael Boatman’s daughter again) notes. That quiets the room and the partners all glare at her. Yeah, that was a kind of stupid thing to say. First of all, it’s just not appropriate to say to the partners, and it’s also, like, missing the point? If it’s easy for conspiracy theories to spread among boomers, maybe just expecting each member of that generation to suddenly have a millennial’s understanding of the internet is the wrong strategy? Maybe there’s some structural issue here? That maybe, just maybe, this case is actually about?

The associate also points out that the internet is currently a place where people can speak out about sexual harassment-- “they repeal section 230, and there would be no #MeToo.”

One of the partners says he doesn’t believe that—if they regulate section 230, then newspapers can actually be competitive and there’s still free speech online.

“We’re not going back to reading newspapers, grandpa,” some associate says. What the actual fuck, dude? Who talks like that to their boss?! It’s so condescending. He’s also wrong! “Newspapers” are not just physical things... reporting by major publications still matters and will continue to matter. Like, is he suggesting that in the future all news will just be random people tweeting things they think are true with no fact checking or curation? Sure, journalism is struggling right now—but I don’t think that’s because there’s a lack of desire for well-reported news.

I am glad the partners call him out on saying “grandpa” and honestly I’m shocked he isn’t asked to leave the discussion after that rude remark. Unless this young looking dude is a partner too? But I don’t think he is.

Julius notes that if they’re going to pursue this case, they need money like Cord’s. At that, Liz starts to leave the meeting. “We haven’t decided if we’re taking this Cord money yet,” Madeline protests. “Of course we are,” Liz says and leaves.

Now that’s more like it! I’m not sure if this is necessarily the best way to handle this, but she’s a) correct, they were always going to take the money because it is $12 million and an issue of interest and b) using her authority. Should Liz be making decisions totally on her own? Maybe not. Does Liz making this decision and then leaving (with everyone accepting that she’s correct) cut through a lot of bullshit and establish Liz as the one in charge? Yup.

Diane says, “Ooh-kay” with a little bit of an eyeroll after Liz exits, but she’s still laying low. I think in a different season Diane might’ve tried to push back.

Is it me or does Baranski get a lot of material this episode we haven’t seen before? Lots of really good reaction shots/tones in this episode I don’t really think we’ve seen from Diane before. I’m impressed there’s still new stuff after 12 years.

At some point maybe I will actually write the essay I’ve been wanting to write for ages about how TGF is still so relevant despite being in a universe that should be showing its age by now. I wish I could find the first time that I called TGW a period piece set in the present day (I know it would’ve been during season five) because I think that’s the key to TGW/TGF’s enduring success. The shows always feel timely because they try to capture the present moment (which is, of course, always changing) and don’t get stuck in any one moment in time. Further, the fact that the writers are always so tuned in to events and skilled at quickly reacting to what happens in the world makes them VERY good in a pinch, which is (I think) why they’re able to make the most of unexpected situations (Josh leaving TGW, the pandemic).

Liz and Julius bring a suit against ChumHum to attack 230. Judge Friend is initially skeptical of their argument that 230 is unconstitutional; then she’s intrigued. I am too. This argument about the press is a very interesting one. I obviously have a lot of reading to do on 230, but my take after this episode is pretty much that social media platforms have to be held responsible in some way, but I don’t think it’s feasible or desirable for them to be responsible for every single one of billions of posts. I think there has to be some way to regulate social media giants that would allow everyday people to share things and speak out but would prevent the curated (even by an algorithm) spread of fake news and make social media giants accountable when there are very public bad actors using their platforms. What that regulation would be I have no idea. I just refuse to believe that our options are to give the social media sites full immunity or to regulate the internet so strongly that no one is able to speak freely because all the platforms are worried about lawsuits.

Over at the VA, people are being fired. When Kurt gets into his office, Madeline Starkey (wait, are there two characters named Madeline in this episode?) is waiting for him. She’s still very quirky and scary.

Starkey says the guy that Diane reported is now saying Kurt trained him on using assault rifles and buying ammunition in bulk. Kurt notes these were topics covered in a group setting, which Starkey knew—and what she’s really after is the names of the others in the group. (She may already know them, since she knows there were five of them.)

Kurt refuses to name names and just stares at her.

Case stuff happens! (I liked the last two episodes a lot but it’s much faster for me to just write, “case stuff happens” for some of the scenes.)

Hey, surprise Aaron Tveit! (Not really a surprise; he is in the credits. But still yay!)

I don’t really know why Liz and Julius are talking about newspapers specifically and not all types of fact-based journalism/press? I feel like their argument is most convincing when it’s about actual newspapers (especially local ones) but still would apply to cable news...

Marissa’s still hard at work sorting papers when the associate comes back in and informs her she can stop; they’ve changed strategies and everything she’s done is now irrelevant. She also says “I forgot to tell you” at the start of that thought, meaning that she neglected to tell Marissa this important information earlier and wasted her time. Marissa is not pleased and so she goes to Wackner’s court, where Wackner now has a deli ticket machine and is wearing super-sized novelty sunglasses. Why not!

He sees Marissa and calls a five-minute recess. In “chambers,” Marissa tells him she’d like to work for him part-time but keep her RL job.

Wackner needs her help processing more copyright certificates. He’s priced them competitively at $20 and found that a lot of writers want these certificates, even though they have no legal value. (Neither do actual copyrights, Wackner notes. And he notes that if anyone plagiarizes, they can sue in HIS court.)

“Marissa, I’m building something here. I want you to join me. I want your advice on cases. I want to bounce legal theories off you,” he says. “What are your legal theories?” she asks. “I don’t know. That’s why I need to bounce them,” he says.

Marissa gives him from noon to 2 and 5-7, which seems awfully ambitious for someone working at a law firm!

“That’s how revolutions are made. Back rooms of copy shops,” he says, accepting her offer.

Kurt is sulking in the dark when Diane arrives home. He lets her know about Starkey’s visit and she immediately goes into lawyer mode. Notably, this scene does not spend much time on how Starkey found out the rioter’s name. Curious if they’re saving that for later or if Diane and Kurt both know what Diane must have done or if Kurt think’s it’s a coincidence.

Kurt SET UP A TOUR OF THE CAPITOL for one of the veterans in his shooting group, and that tour was ON JANUARY 6TH! I really do wish he’d told Diane that upfront.

Maybe the long pause where Kurt refuses to tell Diane which congressperson arranged the tour even after she promises she won’t say is him letting on that he knows that Diane ID’d the guy? Or maybe it’s just Kurt.

I do not like the dead birds in Starkey’s office, mostly because I do not like thinking about dead birds.

Starkey compares Diane and Kurt to the Conways.

And now more case stuff happens.

Julius gets to question a witness for the first time in two years! He’s a little shaky at first but then he does a fantastic job! Yay Julius!

When Diane arrives at the office, reception is filled with around a hundred teddy bears. “What?” she asks. “Build-a-Bears. They were sent to Marissa,” the receptionist explains. “Okay... why?” Diane asks the logical next question. The receptionist does not know.

“This one’s a Marissa bear,” she says, showing Diane a bear wearing boots and a wig. It does not look much like Marissa and it says “Hug me.”

Diane looks confused and furious at the same time. Her look here is, like, a milder version of the death stare she gives Alicia in Outside the Bubble when she learns about Alicia and Cary’s plan to leave.

“Why don’t we, meaning you, take all these stuffed animals and put them in the conference room,” Diane instructs the receptionist. She is NOT! HAPPY! The receptionist seemed to be having fun with the bears, but clearly the right answer was to have done something with them and... not to have put them over every surface in reception. Eeek.

Carmen’s new client, the rapist, arrives at the firm before anyone can hide the bears. “This may not be the firm for you,” his advisor/lawyer (I’m not totally sure what this dude’s job is) warns.

Madeline notices the rapist and glares at the receptionist. “I know. I’m putting them in the conference room,” the receptionist says, thinking Madeline is upset about the bears. She is not upset about the bears.

Diane finds Marissa, who’s working with Carmen again. She asks Carmen to give them a moment.

“Why are there hundreds of teddy bears in our reception?” Diane asks. Marissa is confused. Diane shows her the Marissa bear. Marissa looks horrified and amused. “That doesn’t even look like me,” Marissa notes, completely missing how pissed off Diane is. I don’t think we have seen Diane be this direct/no-nonsense in ages.

“That would seem to be beside the point. What is going on, Marissa?” Diane demands. Marissa suspects this is based on some advice she offered to a client who was buying a Build-a-Bear franchise and thinks this is a thank you gift. “What client? You’re not a lawyer! Why do you have clients?” Diane says exasperatedly.

Marissa gives her a look, and Diane immediately understands that she’s been back to Wackner’s court. “Oh my God, this is about that Copy Coop court?”

“Marissa, no. By participating in that simulacrum of a courtroom, you exposed this firm to malpractice, sanctions, and God knows what,” Diane says. If that were really true, she wouldn’t have sat there and argued. I mean, I don’t know the legality of this all, but I feel like it’s a bigger optics issue than legal issue if Diane and other lawyers are willing to even consider participating?

“If you wish to continue your employment at this firm, you will never do anything like that again. Do you understand?” Diane says. She will not hear any arguments.

I love that Marissa is the thing that keeps Wackner coming back. It’s a good plot for her, but structurally, it also allows the show to keep Wackner around without many contrivances. Wackner sees that Marissa would understand what he’s up to, she sees that he shares some of her frustrations with the law, and they both want to work together again. It’s not like suddenly everyone’s talking about Wackner’s court and all the cases somehow end up there or anything.

The receptionist, who is having a truly terrible day, comes into announce that Kurt and Starkey have arrived. “Don’t put them in the conference room!” Diane commands, knowing that the teddy bears will be there. It’s too late, though, because the receptionist (who previously seemed to be fine at her job if bad at recognizing public figures and understanding that partners might not find teddy bears amusing) has already put them in the conference room. I feel bad for her, and don’t think the other things were her fault, but I feel like she could’ve seen this one coming...

I find the teddy bears HILARIOUS, mostly because the reactions to them are so funny. It’s kind of the same gag as the balloons for Lucca in season two, but I don’t really care, because I’m getting to see Diane Lockhart treat hundreds of Build-a-Bears like they are a real work problem.

Starkey jokes about the bears; Kurt is silent.

The rioter from the poster is now accusing Kurt of coming up with the STRATEGY for January 6th, which Kurt and Diane both dismiss as bullshit.

I could do without Starkey’s musical cues.

I can’t tell if Kurt is in trouble here or if she’s just pressing him to name names. Why wouldn’t she just have rioter guy name names if he’s so eager to blame Kurt? I guess maybe if the others were actually there, he might be less likely to name the names of his actual co-conspirators? Or, Starkey might already know the names (surely the shooting range has logs) and be using this to raise the stakes.

No one (except maybe the partner named Daniel) is happy about the rapist in reception. “Since when are we representing people like Wolfe-Coleman?” Julius asks. Didn’t these people help both Sweeney (though I think Sweeney was in some weird police brutality case and they didn’t actually want to represent him) and Bishop? And Rivi? But they draw the line here? Sure.

Ah, there we go, an expository line-- “he’s the next Jeffrey Epstein”. Almost made it the whole episode without one of these. I’ll forgive it since it’s so late in the episode lol.

“Did you approve this, Liz?!” Madeline demands. Liz did not. Daniel wonders if that means Diane approved it. Liz doesn’t think so and calls Diane (who happens to be walking past) in.

“I know, the teddy bears. I’m working on it,” Diane says when she opens the door. I think the teddy bears are a bigger issue to Diane than to anyone else.

Diane didn’t approve representing Mr. Rapey either. She’s uncomfortable that a meeting was happening without her; Madeline notes that she is standing there specifically because they wanted to involve her.

David Lee pops up out of nowhere with the answer: one of the new associates (not Marissa, “the real one”) pulled in Mr. Rapey. Are there only two associates now even though orientation was for a big group?

Firth is gone, btw. David Lee is the new Mr. Firth. I have no idea why David would want to be STR Laurie’s guy for managing RL but... sure, whatever? David Lee is an effective antagonist, especially in small doses, and this allows the writers to keep him around and continue the STR Laurie plot without a key guest star. If STR Laurie is still a thing, and it seems like it is going to be a thing for a while, then having David Lee take on this role makes sense for plot. Otherwise they’re going to have to shoehorn him in to every plot somehow. At least now he has a reason to be around.

Liz and Diane take a walk to chat. Diane is worried about having David as their boss. Liz says she has a worse worry—David Lee knew exactly when to come downstairs with information, suggesting he know what they were talking about. “Would he do something like that?” Liz asks when Diane wonders if there’s a bug. “Oh, yeah,” Diane replies. Hah, yeah. He absolutely would.

They decide to have Jay search for bugs and Liz is frustrated with how much time they have to spend on things other than lawyering. Yup.

“What is going on with all the teddy bears in the conference room?” Liz asks as they head back to the office. “It’s a long story,” Diane sighs. I also love that the teddy bears link the various pieces of the episode together—it feels like all of these threads are happening simultaneously because of that constant.

I don’t get RL’s approach to clients. Bishop and Rivi are ok, Wolfe-Colman is not (except that actually he is fine). Cord is okay too. Do they draw the line anywhere? I know Liz was right when she said that OF COURSE they were taking the money, but is there really nothing that differentiates that situation from this one? I feel like there should be.

Marissa goes back to see Wackner. Since someone refuses to say “I respect and I love you,” Wackner reverses his ruling. This is part of the “Bad Loser Law of last Wednesday,” so the rules of Wackner’s court are clearly a work in progress.

Marissa explains she can’t be the law clerk because of Diane. She tries to connect him with a real lawyer, still not understanding exactly what Wackner’s after. “You know just enough not to crush what I’m doing here,” Wackner explains. “A real lawyer will look for reasons why not. I need someone to look for reasons why.”

Case stuff happens. I cannot read Cord’s handwriting. Liz and Julius lose the case because Judge Friend says what’s happening isn’t fair, but it is constitutional. (So here we have, at least in the show’s POV, a good and attentive judge who can’t make decisions that make sense because she’s bound by a document written before anyone had ever dreamed of the internet.)

Cord is waiting for Liz in her office. He’s prepared to bankroll an appeal. Did they blow thorough that $12 million already? Impressive; it’s been like a day.

Cord says they are definitely the firm he wants. Interesting.

Now Liz wants a meeting with Carmen, so it’s Marissa who leaves the room. This scene seems like it was meant to be a different day?

Liz wants to talk about Mr. Rapey. Carmen is, yet again, chill about the case. “Carmen, is there anyone that you would not represent?” Liz asks. Funny, Liz, I could ask you the same. Being hesitant about it is not changing the fact that you’re representing bad people. Carmen’s just cutting the bullshit.

“I don’t understand. Is there someone you don’t want me to represent?” I love how Carmen’s incredibly polite responses always seem very pointed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Carmen’s reply, and yet it puts Liz in a place where she can’t dance around what she’s trying to say.

“I’m just trying to get a sense of who you are,” Liz explains.

Then Liz decides she’s going to help on the Craig Wolfe-Colman (Mr. Rapey) case, and they will keep talking about her career path. Liz, this does not seem like the right solution! You're worried about your associate representing bad people so you’re like, I know, what if I ALSO represented bad people? If your goal is to convince Carmen not to take clients like this, you’re kinda shooting yourself in the foot!

“Are you worried about me?” Carmen says, again turning things on Liz. “I don’t know what I am about you,” Liz replies. Me either. Well, I know I'm intrigued, but beyond that, no clue!

All the bears have ended up in Diane’s office, where Wackner is waiting. He jokes about how his court is always seen as informal, yet this real fancy law office is covered in Build-a-Bears. Then he says he wants to hire RL—he's willing to pay. He wants consultation from Marissa (“consultation on legal issues”) and he’s prepared to spend a lot. And, if there’s one thing we know, it’s that they’re always going to take the money. So, they do.

I love that Wackner’s goal is to “perfect my little clubhouse of the law.” It’s a fun plot, and it also allows for the rules in his court to change (I’m sure we’re going to be treated to/subjected to a lot of whimsical gags around changing and ridiculous rules). It's also a good way to work through the thought experiment over the course of the season. It’s not like Wackner already has a system set up and it’s perfect—I'm sure we’re going to see his system run into issues and explore that more, too.

Wackner monologues a bit here about why he’s running fake court, and he lets us know he’s going to monologue. Basically he thinks people no longer want to help people and are only motivated by their own self interest. He notes that no one talks about the Peace Corps anymore and asks the last time Diane heard anyone say those words. I’m sure I’ve heard a reference more recently but my mind went RIGHT to season one Cary Agos saying “Peace Corps. Belize,” as some kind of smarmy pickup line. This is likely not where my mind was supposed to go.

Wackner wants “A new Peace Corps. For America.” Diane’s sympathetic to that and agrees to take him on as a client.

Wackner asks if he can take a bear. Diane instructs him to take two.

Aaaand Wackner and Cord end up on the elevator together. Wackner hands Cord a bear, the elevator doors close, and the episode ends. Since last episode ended with Marissa and Carmen in the elevator together, I’m hoping this will be how every episode this season ends. I think using the Kings’ favorite liminal space to transition between episodes is kind of fun, and it fits with the ellipses at the end of every episode title.

Speaking of... did you see today’s elevator-themed episode of Evil? It was written by the Kings. Those two have been obsessed with elevators for at least a decade.

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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slothgiirl · 3 years

Text

percolating gently (noah x mc)

au in which jane marshall lives and mc and noah and jane run off to live happily ever after a family of three and also smut (if you don’t want to read that skip the section that goes “its christmas, technically”.

title from a tennessee williams quote

15k

It's the three of them in the end. Jane. Noah. And you. Just like it started. Just like it had been.

Always you caught up between the two Marshall twins; Jane’s hand in yours gripping tight and never backing down as she poured water into dirt to make mud. At nine, and never having shared Jane’s attention before, Noah had snubbed you on more than one occasion, shooting down watching Resident Evil just because you had suggested it.

It was funny how you'd befriended Noah first. Jane had a fever the week your parents moved to Westchester (to study some microbe that was super rare or some other incredibly niche nerdy thing). You'd been left to roam the neighborhood on your own as per usual, drawing trees and pets you wished for in chalk, and then Noah.

Noah.

Redfield- Jane’s let up at least a little. You're no longer stuck to that awful chair in terror but griping Noah's shoulders, your fingers clutching the fabric of his denim jacket because he can't, you won't let him take her place.

He's been through so much already.

They both had.

“Noah,” you stammer out, chilled to the bone from terror or the fact that you were in a damp and freezing underground chamber--probably both. “Noah, you can't!” You tighten your grip on him even as his frown deepens, anger clear on his features as he glares down at you.

You cut him off before he can snap at you. Looking over at Jane, no longer blazing, but hovering around, a shadow spilling into the corners of the room, eyes a cold blue without an ounce of friendliness or curiosity.

“I'm sorry,” you tell her, because this was all your fault. You should've never encouraged her. You should've saved her. You should've done more: anything but brush the memory of her away instead of dealing with the events of that summer. Denial had long been your method of choice but here Jane was. It had all been real.

You owe her this much.

And Noah-

“I promised I'd be there for you,” you think of the whistle, “I promised I'd protect you so that's what I'm going to do now,” you say even as your hands shake. “Let me take your place.”

You move to stand, but Noah doesn't budge, his head shaking as his agonized wide eyes meet yours. There's always been a sincere quality in the warmth of Noah's brown eyes that put you at ease and had you feeling like you two were the only people in the world and you could never say no to him; not now. He's a mess (just how you feel), beanie about to slide off his tangled hair, tear tracks down his cheeks. There's a pull in your chest, the painful need to throw your arms around him and hug him until the world stops being this shitty but you doubt you'd ever leave his side if you hug him now.

Noah shakes his head. “It should be me,” he utters into the eerie acoustics of the chamber, the horror of the situation audible in his voice. “It should have been me then. I can finally make things right.”

Your lip grumbles as you cry out, “don't say that,” your hand reaching up to cup his cheek, “don't you dare say that bullshit Noah-we were kids! None of this,” you look around, look at Jane, “this shouldn't have happened to anyone. And it wasn't anyone's fucking fault!”

If-when you got out of this, you were going to throw hands with Mrs. Marshall.

You used to wish she’d been your mother.

The shadow that is Jane inches closer.

Right.

It had to be you or him.

His skin was warm against your hand and you don't-you don’t think you can live in a world where Noah isn't there and he's had the shittiest time and you could've reached out but you didn't and he doesn't deserve this because he thinks he deserves this.

Noah thinks he should've died.

Fuck.

This was all so fucked up.

“It's okay,” Noah whispers softly, his hand covering yours before gently removing your hand from his cheek, removing your hold on him. “It's okay.”

“But-” you look at Jane.

You didn't know what was worse, a world without Noah in it or a world where Noah became some twisted monster the same way Jane had over the years of loneliness. No one started out a monster.

You shake your head, reaching for Noah's hand, “I promised I wasn't leaving you again.”

His eyes widen in shock, giving him that doe eyes look that sort of made you want to kiss him, as if he'd forgotten all about that moment, as if he thought he wasn't worth it but Noah deserved more than death. He should get to go to culinary school and deal with shitty customers at Baby Jane’s.

And it was too late to save the day.

If you were being honest, it was nine years too late. It was all about doing the best you could in impossible circumstances because Jane didn't deserve to spend an eternity alone and scared and a monster either.

Intertwining your fingers with his, you swallow thickly before replying in a steady voice, having made your choice the moment Noah had been willing to go find Dan alone, when he'd opened up to you at the shop and you realized all this time it hadn't just been you dealing with the repercussions of Redfield, “Together.”

You weren't going to fail Noah again.

Noah is speechless.

But Jane was always able to go with the flow. A shadowy limb ghost over both your hands, in the vein of those cheesy moments in anime when a best friend speech got everyone through a big battle.

“Allll play too g etherR.”

“Yeah,” Noah says sadly, accepting that there was no version of this ending that didn't end in tragedy. “together.”

At least this way, you could be monsters together.

“It's okay Jane,” he tells his sister, his hand squeezing yours, “we’ll take over from here.”

You wake up cold, thinking that you'd left your bedroom window open (not that you were doing much sleeping in that room after the Dan night terror) again, but you're greeted with the sight of Jane curled up asleep between you and Noah looking the same as she had at the many sleepovers you'd have at their house. You don't know if she's real or if this is a dream or if you're dead and this is just a figment of your new reality, but you don't care.

Finally, you understand the ending of Inception.

You don't want to wake them up, still exhausted yourself, but Jane keeps shivering and you can only imagine how worried your friends were. Your phone’s dead.

You couldn't stay here.

“Noah,” you whisper, the sound echoing throughout the chamber. “Noah…”

He grumbles in his sleep, but doesn't wake up.

“Noah,” you hiss.

“What,” Noah slurs, shifting as he lifts his head, jostling Jane at his side but your friend who was dead, was previously dead, continues to sleep looking like a particularly angelic little girl.

You can tell when the situation dawns on him: the twitch of his lips as his mouth settles into a frown, brows becoming drawn in thought.

It's day outside.

You're not sure which day.

Noah's phone is also dead.

Both of you stumble through the woods half asleep, Noah carrying Jane as if she was the most precious thing in the world which she was because she had been dead but now she wasn't and you were beginning to hope this was real and not a trick and that Jane was getting a shot at a normal childhood.

“We should go to my house,” you offer, keeping your voice low as to not disturb Jane who continued to sleep, no wonder Andy and Ava had been able to draw so many mustaches on her back in the day. “It's closer.”

And also you had no way of explaining how Jane had suddenly come back to life. That was something to process later. First a warm bed and sleep and then you had to let your friends know you weren't dead and figure out the whole Jane being alive with Noah. But first, sleep.

“Yeah, okay,” Noah answer’s, clearly still in shock. “Sounds good.” He says as if you two were discussing the weather and not sudden resurrection.

Then again, was this really that big of a leap considering everything that happened in the last few months?

You kick off your shoes and curl up with the Marshall twins to sleep.

“Why are you so much taller,” Jane asks once you’ve all woken up and yes, Jane’s still there, flesh and blood and the idea begins to solidify that she’s alive and well, well maybe not, you don’t know how much she remembers if at all and you still don’t know what to do with her but for now Noah’s rifling around your sparse kitchen, sending you a judgemental look at the half empty pancake box mix that expired a month ago but there’s no gross mold or anything so he uses it anyway, unwilling to leave Jane alone for a second.

Noah smiles easily, which has you smiling, “I’m not tall,” he replies to his sister, “you just shrunk.”

She frowns, nose wrinkling and you had forgotten she did that when she was upset, her nose wrinkling up as her lips turn downward. It was adorable. Then in classic Jane fashion she decides, “that’s a lie.” And sticks her nose up in the air, her fingers continuing to do whatever in your hair. It feels nice, her small fingers weaving clumsily through your thick hair, but Jane had never actually learned to braid so you’re pretty sure she’s just tangling your hair up but you wouldn’t refuse Jane anything right now.

It’s been days since the dance.

You have countless missed calls from your friends, texts getting increasingly and increasingly panicked, and nothing from either of your parents.

“Turn around,” Jane squeaks, tapping your shoulder urgently.

“Alright, alright,” you say, shifting in your seat. She’s tiny. All red hair and freckles and she hasn’t left your side since waking you up, knees in your side as she’d yelled that she was bored and wanted to play so loud it had woken Noah up.

Jane looks at you with a frown. “You’re big too.” Then her lower lip wobbles.

Shit.

Hastily, you pull her onto your lap, wrapping your arms around her.

“Why am I still small,” she whispers, looking up at you with the same wide brown eyes you were so used to.

“Uh,” you swallow thickly, trying to figure something out because maybe she didn’t remember and wasn’t that for the best? Wouldn’t that be the best case scenario? The only problem is you’re barely eighteen and not at all prepared to handle a nine year old. Had you really been this small when your parents decided to fuck off? “It’s because. . .you’re special, like Peter Pan.”

She crunches up her nose for a second, thinking. Then in her child innocence, she nods, deciding she likes the explanation. “You should’ve come with me,” Jane pats your cheek sadly, “grown ups are so boring.”

Noah wheezes, a pancake slipping off the spatula as his shoulders shake with laughter.

You hadn’t had time to talk about what had happened, what he had done, and you certainly hadn’t had time to process your feelings on any of it, but you were always glad to see him laughing.

“Someone had to take care of your dumb brother,” you reply, legs kind of going numb with her weight.

Jane nods sagely, “Noah is dumb. Because he’s a changeling.”

When you were kids, you’d both been obsessed with goblins and trolls and fairy tales. You two would dig in the dirt looking for hag stones. Sticks would double as magic wands and swords. The old fur jacket Jane liked to play dress up with was her selkie skin and you would take turns hiding it around the house.

Noah rolls his eyes. He hadn’t liked your weirdo kid games the first time around, he liked them even less now and you can’t help but grin at his expense. “You’re the redhead in the family.”

Jane blows a raspberry.

What a way to win an argument.

It’s past midnight before Jane crashes.

You’re on your third watch of frozen which had seemed like a great way to keep Jane inside the first time when you’d suggested it (kids loved that movie) and had become the worst, as Jane made you watch the movie again and again, singing “do you want to build a snowman” at the top of her lungs. That hadn’t stopped you and Noah from helping her find all the pillows in your house to build a castle with. Your living room has become a pillow castle fort.

During the second watch, Jane had dug around through your closet, before finding a blue hoodie you didn’t even remember you had and tying it around her shoulders. “You’re Anna,” she’d told you, giving you pigtails when she gave up on braids.

Now, she was asleep on the couch, drooling on her pillow.

Noah immediately turns off the TV. “You couldn’t have put on Shrek?”

You’re sitting next to him on the floor, finally giving into the urge to look at the news on your phone. You hadn’t risked it while Jane was awake. She was a nosy child.

You frown, “we need to tell the others.” Because this was really happening. Jane was alive and you didn’t know what to do with that. She needed. . .fuck-she needed school and parents and probably therapy if she remembered any of it. You were just eighteen. You had no idea what to do.

Noah’s responding frown mirrors yours. “What? Why!”

“She just came back from the dead,” you reply quietly. “She needs-fuck what are we going to tell your mom?”

His expression turns angry, brows furrowing. “Fuck her. She doesn’t deserve to know.”

“Noah,” you sigh, not wanting to argue with him because what was there to argue. His mom was a shitty parent. “Dan, Andy. . .they think we’re dead. They deserve to know after what happened. They deserve an explanation.”

He flinches.

“And besides-we’re in high school! What are we-what the hell are we going to do with her,” you say gently because you couldn’t keep her cooped up in your house. You had things like high school and maybe college if you could salvage this quarter. You didn’t have a job. “She needs parents. And school. And. . .” You throw your hand sup in the air. You had no clue what she needed. You weren’t a functioning adult. You didn’t know what kids need.

“She has me.” Noah hisses back.

You roll your eyes. “I know that-fuck Noah,” becuase he was getting angry with you when all you were trying to do was help. God, he could be so freaking dense sometimes. “She deserves a normal childhood. How the hell are we supposed to do that for her? Does she remember any of it?” You cross your arms over your chest and stare at your feet. The garish pink nail polish was still intact.

Didn’t people need birth certificates and stuff?

Lucas would know.

Lily could probably do her computer thing and help with that.

He falls silent, glaring at the blank TV screen.

Noah’s breathing is harsh and you wait patiently.

“I can drop out,” Noah finally says quietly. “Get a job. . .”

“I’m going to call Lily,” you reply. “We need groceries anyway.” Like hell were you leaving Jane for even a second. This time, you mean to keep your promise.

Jane bursts into tears when she sees all her friends grew up without her, eyes turning red as tears streamed down her eyes and she buried her face in Noah’s chest, refusing to budge. He rubs his hand comfortingly against her back, carrying her upstairs.

Even from the living room, still a mess, you can hear her sob upstairs.

“What the absolute fuck,” Lucas utters, taking a seat, resting his head in his hands.

“Explain,” Stacy urges, already unpacking the groceries you’d requested into your kitchen.

You do.

You go over the last couple of days, most of which you spent sleeping.

“I think it says a lot about how fucked our lives are that this is only like the second craziest thing to happen to us,” Andy mutters, pacing around the room. “I mean,” he says stopping near the kitchen island, “the whole town got brainwashed!”

“Does-does she remember,” Lily asks.

You shrug, “I. . .I don’t think so. Clearly she doesn’t know why we’re all older. Maybe it’ll come back to her?” You hope it doesn’t.

“So what are we going to do,” Lily says, looking around at everyone.

Dan speaks up, “Jane could have blocked out those memories. My therapist said that can happen with traumatic events.”

“That makes sense,” you find yourself saying, slumping in your seat. You think you could just finish high school at home. It’s not like your parents would know, or care. They’re not here. That way Noah can finish high school and you can look after Jane. But then what?

“Just so we’re all on the same page,” Ava asks rhetorically, “we’re just going to ignore the fact Noah tried to kill us?”

You flinch.

“Jesus fucking christ Ava,” Andy snaps, looking just as agitated as you’ve all felt for months.

“One crisis at a time,” Stacy complains, closing the cupboard door with a hard thunk, “I can only handle one crisis at a time.” Then she looks over at you, “are you-is. . .you can stay at my house if you need to.” No one suggests Noah and Jane going to their own house.

You shake your head.

At some point, you were going to hash things out with Noah, but it wasn’t exactly anger at Noah that you felt. It was hurt and the raw heart crushing betrayal. You know you hadn't been there for him when he needed you--for years-- but you thought, you wish he had just told you about Jane being Redfield.You would have helped, you would have done anything to help Noah and Jane and maybe no one would’ve needed to play are you scared at all. Fuck.

But no. You don’t feel scared at being here with him which was what Stacy was asking about. It hadn’t even crossed your mind even once.

But it feels too private to tell them that the three of you have been inseparable since the ruins. You’d spent last night curled up on the living room floor with him. But that knowledge was yours. You weren’t about to share that.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine. “She can’t stay in Westchester can she?” Because you’re tired and want someone else to tell you what to do for once.

“Probably not,” Lucas answers tightly, still looking freaked out, eye twitching.

“It’s not a trick or anything. . .” Andy glances around.

You shake your head. Slowly, a plan forms in your head. Your parents would pay for your college, you’d apply out of state and take the Marshall twins with you. Instead of a dorm, you’d get an apartment. It could work.

Somehow.

“Have your parents called,” Dan asks gently.

“No,” you wave off. They weren’t important. Jane was.

“Have you thought about how you’re going to explain this,” Andy asks.

You wince. “Sort of. . .I don’t know.” You put your hands in your head.

It's Ava who wraps her arm around your shoulders, “we’ll figure this out.”

“Thanks.”

It's a familiar type of awful that Noah’s mom doesn’t really care that he’s spent the last six months living at your house.

With a great deal of arguing at 2 in the morning while lying next to a sleeping Jane, you’d managed to convince Noah to finish high school. And you’d promptly switched to homeschooling.

Lily had come through with Jane’s paperwork, now in your bag as your friends drop you off at the nearest regional airport.

You hold Jane’s hand, the only thing keeping her from running off as she takes the sight of the airport in. She’s thrown countless fits about being cooped up. But it was too risky for her to be seen in Westchester, a small town where everyone knew she’d died. The most you could do was your backyard.

So of course you’d made up for it by letting her pick your college.

“Someplace warm and sunny,” Jane had shouted excitedly, mind going crazy with plans as your acceptance letters came in.

Months on, it’s way less awkward even if Ava and Lucas have settled on ignoring Noah.

Andy hugs you hard. “Call when you land!”

You snort, “duh.”

Lily smiles and adds, “I might visit for spring break.”

“That would be great,” you tell her, tightening your hold on Jane as something catches her attention.

She pivots to Noah, who had the backbone of a toothpick when it came to telling Jane no which is why she keeps getting to skip brushing her teeth in the morning which was gross and she hated you for trying to chase her down, “I want that stuffed animal. If you give me that narwhal, I’ll eat my veggies.”

“You’re eating your veggies anyway,” you reply back, dragging her along.

“You won’t have to watch frozen tomorrow.” She continues, targeting her brother ruthlessly.

Noah’s already fishing his wallet out.

“That’s what you said about the hair color,” you point out, opting to carry her when she goes limp. “Don’t you dare Noah.”

Ava grins at you, amused and unhelpful.

“It’s just a toy,” he replies.

You roll your eyes.

“You two are such parents,” Andy laughs.

“I hate you,” Jane huffs. “We’re not friends anymore.”

“She told you,” Ava snorts.

Jane beams. Then reaches for Noah, who takes her from your arms without complaint.

You hug Lily one last time, and then. . .you’re going through security.

“I get the window seat,” Jane declares once you get past TSA.

“Go for it,” you tell her, belatedly realizing it’s going to be hell if it turns out she doesn’t like planes.

She nods, satisfied.

Tampa is no less humid and hot and awful a month in then it was when you first got off the plane but Jane loves it and there’s a park next to the building your living in: a tiny cramped apartment with only one room which went to Jane obviously which you and Noah had originally planned for you and Jane to share but both of you had capitulated to Jane’s demands within the day. She deserved being spoiled.

The A/C in Ikea was a godsend.

Sleeping on the floor with the bare necessities was not it and with you starting school next week, it was time to take your meager savings and get some furniture.

“Remember,” Noah says, pulling up the list on his phone. It had started with him grocery shopping since he cooked and needing to make a grocery list to Noah just taking over figuring out how to make the money your parents sent and his own contribution from his new job work. “Sofa bed. Bed for Jane. Blankets. One lamp. And a mattress.”

“Weren't you complaining about only having one pan this morning,” you ask as Jane drags you along to the first showroom, practically bouncing with energy.

Noah shrugs. “I can make it work.”

“Buying an extra pan won't kill us,” you counter. “We can just use my credit card.” And not eat out for the rest of the month, you didn't add.

“Let's play hide and seek,” Jane says with excitement. “I'll seek.”

You exchange glances with Noah.

Tomorrow you had to go sign her up at school. You had to go over the story with her again. Just to make sure you didn't all get in trouble.

Jane covers her eyes. “One. Two. . .”

You look around the tiny space, thinking of where to hide. Between school and Jane you weren't sure when you could or even if you could get a part time job. Noah was working at a diner during the evenings. You had gotten your classes early in the morning so you could be home with Jane while he worked. The problem was finding the extra free time to work.

Ugh.

Being an adult was hard.

But how much of an adult could you be when your parents were paying your tuition?

You head for the tiny bathroom which has a neat looking toothbrush holder and isn’t that something you need to buy? There were so many little things like a bath mat and towels and a dish rack that were only just occurring to you that were sort of essentials and jeez you really had one foot in adulthood. You don’t even hide behind the curtain, worried that Jane won’t find you easily and freak out and there’s weirdos everywhere. It was your job to look after her now. Not that Noah had asked for your help, but it was a given.

“Eight. . .nine. . .” Jane’s little voice carries and you’re struck by a flood of emotions that has your eyes tearing up.

Noah steps into the bathroom next to you, “we need a cutting board,” he says so seriously you can’t help but snort.

“What,” he asks, shaking his head at you.

“Nothing.”

He tilts his head.

You shrug, “just thinking. I don’t know. I don’t feel very grown up. And I took all the dumb towels my parents stockpiled for granted.”

“We should’ve raided your house,” he agrees, the corner of his lips lifting, “purge style.”

“Yeah,” you nod, “I never get why everyone jumps straight to murder. What does Ava always say? Redistribute the wealth, rob a bank.” You roll your eyes, scoffing, “murder.”

Noah snorts. “Pretty sure that’s Lucas. Ava’s more of a go straight to cutting people’s heads off.”

“Robespierre style,” you grin.

“Robes who?”

“Robespierre. From the french revolution.”

“I think that’s the class I must’ve ditched,” Noah admits.

You frown. “You could do community college,” because you had to corner him at some point. Noah was very good at avoiding subjects he didn’t want to talk about. “We could make it work. Do your G.E.’s”

Noah shrugs.

“Noah-” Because he said he wanted to go to culinary school and you get the urge to drop everything and buy a ranch in utah and live with Jane for the rest of your lives except Jane would hate that and grow up and leave and how are you going to afford spoiling her if you can’t get a decent job? Noah deserved to go for his dreams too.

None of you had to be defined by your incredibly shitty childhood.

Jane pops in, “found you!” She giggles in her Baby Yoda t-shirt and leggings, “you two are bad at this game! My turn!” Jane grabs Noah’s hand and drags him along to the next showroom that catches her eye, “remember,” she lectures you both, “no peeking,” before shooting off.

“What did you end up choosing for your major,” Noah asks, as you both fail to keep your eyes closed, looking over at the sofa section. It would be so freaking nice not to sleep on the carpet anymore.

“History,” you admit, “though I’m not sure it’ll stay like that. I don’t know exactly what I want to do after college. Or if I even like history enough to major in it. . .it just sounded fine at the time.” You had done well in APUSH. That had to mean something. But you had also liked your economics class. . .maybe you should do economics? “I really have no clue. Has it been ten seconds?”

“Probably,” Noah says with a smile, “nine, ten, coming to find you,” he calls out.

It’s a living room showroom, and yet Jane had managed to squeeze herself right behind a floor lamp and the TV stand. She’s a slip of a girl, but her red hair makes her easier to spot. Thank god.

“Let’s go pick out things for your room,” you offer, because you still have to go downstairs and find all the different pieces and then still go home and put them together. Thank god for uber. Oh shit, did this mean you had to get a car at some point? How do people buy cars?

“Okay,” Jane nods, immediately taking off, and she has you and Noah speed walking after her, on the border of a full out run. It was hard to be annoyed when you were still so happy to wake up in a world where Jane was alive and here and who cares that it took three hours to get her to stand still long enough to comb her hair and putting her to bed was a long drawn out affair of a bedtime story and a snack and needing to be tucked in and checking on all her toys and deciding she needed a glass of water next to her just in case she woke up thirsty.

It was worth it.

You liked not living alone.

You liked not being alone.

You weren't sure who was more exhausted as you finished washing the dishes. Jane was sleeping, thank god. The nice thing about Florida was it was fall and it was still warm enough to spend the evening at the park so Jane could tire herself out while you read fifty pages of your history and sociology textbook. It was what all the other moms did and you winced when Jane asked to join the soccer team that practiced at the park by your building because you didn't have the money and you could only hope she didn't ask Noah because he came home tired enough but for Jane he'd take more shifts.

There was laundry you didn't want to do and a quiz in english which was a nice class even if everyone was half asleep at 7:30 in the morning because your professor was somehow awake enough to engage and rant about short stories that thankfully weren't the same ten dead old white men you'd read in high school but actual people alive today whose english you could understand. It's night, so you don't bother drying the dishes before turning off the light. Noah had brought food which showed how tired he was. Yesterday's leftovers had saved you from attempting anything because you sucked in the kitchen as your poor microwave could attest: aluminum foil and microwaves don't mix.

Noah’s already asleep when you slide into bed next to him. You can still smell the scent of oil and grease on his skin even as you stay decidedly on your side of the bed.

It's mid september in Tampa and it's still warm and it doesn't stop you at all from curling up with a blanket.

The window panes are cracked open letting in the soft moonlight and you lay in bed, brain melted from class and reading, and look at Noah's profile and how much lighter he looked compared to a year ago. The lines around his mouth from frowning had eased; Jane teasing out a side of him that had previously shriveled up.

It's done him good to get away from his mom. To have his sister. You just wish you could do more for him.

Like he was doing for you and Jane.

You drift off to sleep. . .

“Move over,” a small voice asks, and your eyes crack open to the dark of the room and Jane a hair's breadth away with wide scared eyes, a pillow hugged to her chest. Her voice is raw, as if she'd been crying.

You move over, brain sleep addled, to make room for her.

She slips in besides you, immediately curling up in your chest the way she does when she decides she's done walking for the day: the way she runs up to Noah when he gets home from work.

“Did you have a bad dream,” you mumble, not wanting to wake up her brother.

“I don't know.” Jane admits, “I just don't want to sleep alone.”

“I thought you wanted your own room,” you tease, a little more awake now.

“I do,” she cries out loudly in the dark of the night.

You can just imagine her pouting even if you can't see her, your eyes falling shut again. “Okay. You can sleep over tonight.”

“Yay,” she whispers back. “We should draw a mustache on Noah.”

You snort, “too late. He hasn't bothered shaving in like two days.” It was a good look on him: stubble. You'd teased him ruthlessly, almost choking on your water when he'd gone pink.

Jane giggles.

“Go to sleep,” you tell her. “You have school.”

“So do you.”

“Sleep.”

“Tell me a bedtime story.”

“Jane,” you whine, rolling over away from her, because she sure wasn't going to stop. “Sleep.”

“Where the fuck are my shoes,” Noah says, as he stumbles around trying to find his things.

You should've folded the laundry last night. Instead, it was a pile on the floor, clean, but a mess. You had parent teacher conferences today, and of course you were rushing at the last minute. Between finishing a paper for sociology and ditching class because of the conference and it's not like your statistics professor took roll call, you were still in a towel, freshly showered.

“Check the hall closet. I told Jane to clean last night and I'm like one hundred percent sure she just stuffs everything in that closet. Dan's right, we're fucking her up by spoiling her too much.” You search the pile of clothes for a nice dress. Was that right for a parent teacher conference? You were 18, what did you know? Besides, you were like guardian adjacent. Not a parent.

“Okay,” Noah replies when you hear the door open and why can't you find any clean underwear, you just did laundry this is insane and you have like five minutes to leave or you will be late, “but why'd she only put away one shoe?”

“Don't goblins only steal left shoes or something,” you reply, finding clean underwear but giving up on the bra. You'd go with a blue and white plaid dress. It wasn't too revealing for school even if it was one of those back of the closet dresses you never actually wore.

You slip your underwear on under the towel as Noah reappears in jeans and a t- shirt, freshly shaved. “What if they ask too many questions?”

“They won't,” you wave off. “And if they do we can just lie.”

“You're a bad liar,” Noah teases, rifling around in the kitchen.

You toss the towel aside, trying incredibly hard to act cool and calm when you weren't anything but, as you go to pull the dress over your head. It's not like you were flashing him. You sleep next to Noah every night.

But then why did you feel so flustered right then. “Am not!” You squawk indignantly, turning over to look at him as your dress goes over your head and your boobs are no longer hanging out for the world to see (there was a point to curtains after all).

Noah goes bright pink when he realizes your half naked in the living room, as if he hasn't slept next to you for close to a year now but then again, you used to sleep in an old shirt and underwear and now you've got matching pjs because Noah and yeah you should probably do something about that like you had wanted to since the party ages ago now but there had been Redfield and Noah admitting he was in a terrible headspace and it wasn't the time and now. . .you brush the thought aside for now. You roll your eyes (because your cool and calm even if your heart’s beating erratically) and grab your purse, before joking, “so are you going to get a haircut or are you going to do the man bun thing.”

Noah groans, “Jane told me I looked like homeless dog.”

“Ouch,” You laugh, “when she say that?”

“She woke me up again last night but I got her to go to her bed this time.” He admits as you walk to Jane’s school.

“Again?” Fuck maybe she was having nightmares after all. “It has to be nightmares, but. . .” you trail off.

“I don't know,” Noah shrugs, “she says she doesn't remember. Just wakes up. But like why else would she keep waking up if it's not nightmares,” he frowns.

“Do you think they could be,” you purse your lips before continuing not wanting to be the one to bring it up but you sort of had too, “you think it's redfield related.”

“I really don't know,” he says, looking over at you with a sad smile.

Smiling softly, you squeeze his hand as you wait for the white pedestrian sign, “hey, she's got us. She'll be fine.”

Which makes you think about how Andy was right. You were such a mom. Had you mom-zoned yourself? That was good, you'd have to text that to Andy later.

Then you sigh, realizing that if you had a nightmare back then, your parents wouldn't have even been home for you to wake up. There had been weeks spent at Pine Springs and driving over to some niche science conference in Rochester or over to New Haven for a lecture.

“What,” Noah asks, intertwining your fingers with his as you cross the street.

“Just realizing how shitty my parents were,” you offer with a sad smile. What could you do about it now? You'd grown up.

“Just now,” Noah quips with a smirk.

You roll your eyes, “shut up.”

Jane’s teacher, an older black woman who's style leans close to Lily's own preppy academic choices, looks at you both skeptically. “You’re here for Jane Marshall's conference?”

Both you and Noah nod.

She doesn't look reassured.

You bump Noah's knee with yours, hoping he'll say something to clear things up. Neither of you looked old enough to be her parents. You had a serious case of baby face.

“Uh,” he says, still an eighteen year old who's spent most of his life bowing down to teachers authority. You understood, still feeling strange going to the bathroom during lecture without asking for permission. “I'm Jane’s brother.”

You nudge him again when it's clear he's done taking.

“Noah,” he manages.

You roll your eyes. “We’re her guardians,” you had gone over the story hundreds of times, “their parents passed,” you look down at you lap trying to look sad, “a few months ago.”

“Oh,” Jane’s teacher, Miss Sanders, says sympathetically. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah well,” Noah trails off.

“Well Jane is a very outgoing girl,” Miss Sanders says, launching into her talk, “she's made lots of friends though sometimes getting her to be quiet during class time can be a challenge. She's at her grade level for reading and math. She does need more practice with writing longer sentences and,” she shuffles papers around, flipping through a red folder, before taking out some childish drawings. “These had me worried but in light of the loss she is going through, I think it's understandable.”

Each drawing is a variation of a theme: huge black blobs make up most of the page, with occasional stick drawings differentiated by hair color. Jane is obviously the girl with the red hair and triangle body. Redfield, she remembered something then.

Could it be subconscious?

You feel the blood leave your face as you look over at Noah. He looks just as shaken as you.

“It's normal for children going through the loss of a loved one, especially parents,” Miss Sanders tries, “to work through it in drawing and writing. But we could always let her talk to the school psychologist. Mrs. Hernandez is a wonderful child therapist.”

“Do you think it would help,” you ask, wondering if it was a good idea when Jane’s actual problem was of the supernatural variety. Maybe they would just assume that was her imagination, or her way of explaining away a loss.

“It couldn't hurt.”

You look over at Noah, slipping your hand into his, giving him an encouraging squeeze in his palm. It was his sister. It should be his call.

He pulls his hand out of yours, straightening up in the chair. “Yeah. That could be good.”

“Okay. I'll let Mrs. Hernandez know. That and make sure Jane’s reading books for AR. Her goal this year should 40 points if she wants to be part of the end of the year celebration.”

“I'll figure out where the library is,” you nod, “I'm sure she can find books while I study.”

“Sounds perfect. Any other questions.”

You look at Noah who shakes his head. He was starting to need a haircut. Even if you did like the way he looked with his hair loose.

“Alright then. It was lovely to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Marshall.”

“Oh,” heat builds up in your cheeks.

“We're not-”

“I'm not-,” you stammer, “I'm just a family friend.”

“Oh,” Miss Sander says, “I'm-sorry for assuming.”

“It's fine,” you manage, starting to leave. “Thank you. It was good to meet you.” You shake her hand, wanting to die inside.

“Nice to meet you as well,” she shakes Noah's hand and then you can finally leave.

You both hurry out the classroom, out the school.

“So that was,” Noah says, raising a brow.

“awful,” you finish. “But there were no red flags and we got free therapy out of it.”

Noah laughs, “I think we probably all need some therapy.”

“Rewatching arrested development isn't cutting it anymore,” you grin.

“I do feel like Gob most days.”

“Good,” you laugh.

“Really?”

“I don't trust people who identify with Michael. No self awareness.”

Noah laughs, “they are all horrible people.” His face becomes drawn, as he tucks loose strands of hair behind his ears. “How much do you think she remembers?”

You shrug, placing your hand on his arm. “I think it's probably bits and pieces. She did spend years and...she doesn't have nightmares? That's a good sign right? It's been months, she's not some creepy horror movie child?”

“Of course not,” he nods, looking down at you, with a frown. “She's fine. Jane's good.”

You smile shakily. “We're doing amazing. And she's happy if she hasn't stopped watching disney vlogs. No clue how we're going to swing that one if she asks.”

Noah matches you’re unsure smile, “take her to those rich people parks and call it disney.”

You snort. “It's Jane. That won't fool her.”

“It's Florida. We can just go to the beach.” He says with a shrug. “It'll be just as good.”

“Aren't there alligators though?”

Noah laughs at your expense. “Those are in the lakes and rivers.”

“Shut up. Want to go for pizza before you go to work?”

“Let's go get Indian food actually. There's this place I've been meaning to try but Jane’s-”

“Picky as fuck,” you say pointedly. “Like you used to be.”

Noah blushes. “Okay so my mom just cooked like kraft mac and cheese. That wasn't my fault.”

“And those pizza bites! I loved those,” you add, thinking back on all the sleepovers at their house as a kid. “I think when Jane came over was the only time I'd get to use peanut butter.” Your parents weren't around, but your nanny was philippina, you ate spice before kids discovered hot cheetos were delicious.

He snorts, running a hand through his hair. “We should probably get a car at some point.”

“Face it bro, we're broke. I keep wanting to tell you to get a haircut but we're broke.”

Noah raises a brow. “Fuck off. I look like post-Beatles George Harrison.”

“You wish you looked like George Harrison,” you tease.

The food was amazing. Lunch indian buffets were where it was at. And since you don't have a class right after, you offer to walk Noah to work, “I've got to walk off the food baby,” you tell him, before you head back to pick Jane up.

Noah laughs, “The malai kofta was just too good.”

“I should've stopped at three plates but buffets always make me think it's a food contest,” you admit. “My nanny would take me to this seafood buffet with her family around lunar new year and we’d spend all day there to try and eat our money's worth.” It had been your favorite holiday as a child, after your parents had decided you were old enough to be left behind, only a handful of years after they decided you were old enough to bring along with them, and you hadn't seen them even at christmas.

“Damn,” Noah says with an easy smile, “at least I had good times with my parents.” His smile is so fragile. That just means it hurt him more when things fell apart.

“I had nice times too. . .with your family.”

Noah cackles.

You cross the street to the diner he works at next to a retirement complex with what you think are the best waterfront views next to the hotels you can't afford.

It's strange.

Your entire life, Noah has been this huge part of it and you've always lived in a tiny town so you knew everyone he did and knew what he got up to just by living near him in a town of like 500 people or what felt like such a small amount, your elementary school only had one class for each grade but now you hug Noah goodbye even though he always tenses against you, as though he's unused to the physical affection and that just makes you hold him tighter, then he's heading inside and greeting people you probably will never know and he's having this whole part of his life your not a part of and one day he's going to go on and live his life without you and it hurts: watching him laugh with some waitress that's tall blonde and beautiful in a way you've never been.

It hurts but you suck it up and go pick Jane up from school.

“Don’t worry,” your friend says, holding your hand once she realizes you've been standing at the water's edge. It's warmer than you'd imagined as it laps at your bare feet.

Jane has not stopped smiling since you'd bought her a bathing suit at Target: a pink one piece with sloths. You'd been more nervous, not knowing how to swim. You also felt every single bite of pasta you'd had last night in your black bikini.

Damn Noah for being so good at cooking.

“I've got you,” Jane says, leading you out further into the water, over to where Noah's out, up to his waist and you're pretty see it's deeper than Jane is taller, but if Jane can do it-a wave, a massive looking wave comes crashing towards you both.

You don't hesitate to run away.

Noah points and laughs.

You flip him off once the wave passes, leaving your hair wet.

Jane grins. “It's okay. I won't let you drown.” She pulls you back out again, a perfectly happy water baby. She always had been fearless. And unlike you, as the water deepens, she starts to swim alongside you.

“See,” she laughs, “it's easy.” Then she pops down under.

You make it to Noah, figuring the water wasn't that crazy. No tsunami like waves to pull you out to sea and drown you.

Jane comes up for air, “I'm Jaws,” she yells at Noah, tackling his side.

“Ooof,” he says, exaggerating, “oh no, a shark, I'm. . .dead dying. . .”

Jane giggles.

“Do not,” you warn her. “I'm barely here as is.”

Noah rolls his eyes and you have a feeling there about to roast you: both of them.

“It's just a little water,” he teases.

“It's not even that deep,” Jane adds. “It's the beach!” She pops back down under the water as another wave rolls towards you.

“Fuck,” you mutter, tensing, as the wave soaks what's left of your dry hair, splashing salty water into your mouth.

Jane pops her head back up, strawberry hair plastered to her head, smiling so wide. It's November and it's still warm enough to go to the beach. Even the rain here isn't cold that way it was back home.

The world was so much bigger than Westchester.

Noah reaches his hand out to yours. You take it easily, stepping closer to him, pushing your wet hair out of your face.

He had the right idea, now looking more like the fifth beatle than a shaggy haired hippie. Less to deal with at the beach.

“You okay,” he smirks.

“Shut up. I can't swim. You know that.” You'd complained about it a hundred times as they both forced you off the pile of towels where you had planned to read through your notes. Studying, it was gross.

“You're,” Noah rolls his eyes, “it's like three feet. You're not going to drown.”

“What if,” you counter, “I trip and swallow water and drown.”

“That's not going to happen. What you can't stand up?”

“Don't,” you warn.

He smirks, “it's because you're short.”

“Asshole,” you say, smacking his bare chest. Nothing you haven't seen, you tell yourself. Act normal, you reminded yourself.

“It is!” Noah crouches down a couple inches to your height.

You roll your eyes-

-and laugh when Jane launches herself onto her brother's back.

“I'm an orca!”

Noah lets go of your hand to regain his balance. “Wow there shamu.”

Jane frowns. “Sea world is evil. Ava and I watched Blackfish.”

You vaguely remember some orca documentary that you had mostly slept through. Taking care of Jane was hard and you had fallen asleep in those early weeks whenever you got the chance.

“No seaworld then,” you shrug.

“But I do wanna go to Disneyworld. I wanna go on the star wars ride!”

“You don't even watch Star Wars,” Noah points out.

“I would if we went to Disneyworld. My birthday is coming up.”

“No it's not,” you frown. They were April babies.

“I think you mean my birthday,” Noah says playfully.”

“I was born first,” Jane yells.

“So, I'm taller.”

You roll your eyes, sinking down to your neck. The water was nice. “You better throw yourself into the water if I start drowning,” you warn Noah.

“Yeah yeah,” he says with a soft smile, “I'm not going to let you drown.”

Jane nods in agreement, “I'll kick him if he does.”

You laugh, happy to spend the days with the Marshall twins.

Bells don't ring, but the whole class knows when class is over, shoving their papers away into bags as soon as there's a minute left.

You leave English happily enough. It was a fun class, with plenty of movies and conversation that you were able to make friends in, unlike other lecture heavy classes where you had five minutes before class to talk during.

Sasha and Kevin both walk with you out of the lecture hall. “Have you started studying for the midterm,” Sasha asks, “I really don't want to write two in class essays. Multiple choice is where it's at.”

“I'd rather have an in class essay,” Kevin says, “and Professor Laux said it's just one. But he'd give us two prompts.”

You wrinkle your nose. “I love english I just hate the writing part. Or rather the long essays.”

“At least your not a computer science major,” Sasha counters, “physics is so much worse.”

“Not as bad as o chem.”

“O chem is not that bad,” Sasha counters.

You shrug, “art history major,” you grin smugly.

Kevin shakes his head, “just wait until you have to find a job.”

“Grad school. Both my parents love that shit. They'd help me pay for it.” They both had Ph.Ds.

“I wish my parents helped me pay for school,” Sasha complains again, “they are such hard asses about school but they want me to pay for everything, and live at home-can you imagine how many house parties I've missed to work at the movie theater.”

“Speaking of house parties,” Kevin pushes his glasses up his broad nose, “we're throwing this pre thanksgiving bash at my place. Beer. Snacks. Weed.”

“Shouldn't you be studying for midterms,” you ask, shaking your head. You also hadn't figured out what you were doing for the holiday. You had Jane and Noah now. It had to be special.

“Pfft. I will,” Kevin says. “You're only twenty once am I right?”

Sasha shakes her head. “Okay. But I'm stealing some weed.”

“You in?” They both look at you.

Noah's off Monday and Wednesday, when you get out too late to go pick up Jane. You can't leave her by herself, not that you would want to. You were looking forward to going to waste time at the mall and buy snacks at target: your usual Friday night.

You shake your head, “Can't. I've got Jane on the weekends. Babysitters are expensive.”

“Just tell your parents to look after your sister,” Kevin says petulantly.

You hadn't really explained things. It was complicated. Redfield had really messed up your life. Jane should be your age and going to house parties with you. But you'd have her alive in any shape or form so long as you got to see her. “Umm, actually,” you decide to explain a little, the practiced version, “her parents died a few months ago. They were-they were really close family friends and practically raised me so,” you trail off, thinking about how exactly to explain Noah. He was your best friend, a childhood friend, and. . .that was it.

“Oh shit, I'm sorry.”

“Yeah-”

“Well, if you're even able to figure it out,” Kevin says, “hit me up.”

You wave them goodbye and rush to your next class.

Noah's hair is still damp as he lays down on his side of the bed.

You were still going over your art history notes, wanting to go over the dates of the list of paintings you'd have to identify on tomorrow's quiz. The names were easy since styles even within art movements varied so much. It was a little harder in regulated art worlds: the buddhists of southeast asia didn't go outside their geometric ratios.

“You've been studying all day,” Noah says with a yawn. He no longer smelled like burnt oil.

“Yeah, I have a quiz.” You're sitting cross legged on your side of the bed. “It's on art identification.”

“That's what googles for,” he snarks back.

It was past midnight. Jane had been asleep for three hours.

“Smart ass.” You shut your notebook. The numbers had started swimming in your eyes a while ago. Nothing more was going to stick in your brain.

You turn off the light on your side.

“You're the smart one,” Noah laughs, “I'm just an asshole.”

“Oh,” you smile in the dark, highly aware of his body laying next to you, carefully keeping your leg from brushing against his skin. “You're self aware too!”

“Dick.”

“Takes one to know one.”

You lay in silence, listening to the sounds outside your windows, the cars passing by even at this hour, Noah breathing next to you. It was soothing, having people you loved with you. It wasn't lonely being home all the time.

Noah shifts onto his side: facing you.

You stare up at the ceiling, black from the curtains pulled right even as the window let the breeze in. It had been raining the past few days, but the cold days don't hold a candle to Westchester this time of year.

“Thank you.”

“For what,” you ask, smiling freely.

“What do you mean,” he pitches his voice higher, “for what? For everything.”

You giggle. “I haven't done much.”

Noah's tone is dead serious the next time he speaks. “You didn't have to help . . .with Jane. I don't know how I would've made it work without you, so yeah. Thank you. I didn't even ask-I wouldn't have asked you to give up college and partying-”

You have to stop him right there. “I didn't give shit up Noah.” He could be so dumb sometimes. If he had just told you Jane was Redfield, you would've helped him from day one to save her. But there was no point in bringing that up: just more salt in the wound. “And you didn't have to ask me: I wasn't just going to let you flounder alone. I wanted to-I wanted to be with you and Jane. That was never a question.” Heat flares up in the skin of your cheeks and nose as you smile, before you turn onto your side, looking over at Noah in the dark.

You can't really see him at all.

Thank fuck.

It's bad enough that you feel so flustered you might explode from the emotions swirling about in your chest. You don't know what to do about Noah, about your feelings for him.

Months ago, you would've just bitten the bullet and kissed him, but he'd also opened up about not feeling ready at all about relationships and you will not fuck things up for either of you. It had been easy with Connor when all the lights were green as he was clearly into you and responded right back.

It had been light and a way to not think about the terror of your day to day life for a few moments.

But it wasn't Connor you thought about so much your skin got all hot as you looked out the window during lecture.

You swallow thickly, squashing those feelings into some back corner of your mind.

“Thank you though, I don't know what I would have done without you.”

“Don't be dumb. It's getting rid of me that'll be hard.” You could admit now, “Now that I know what it's like to have people in the house to kill spiders, I'm never leaving,” you felt lonely in your childhood house all through high school.

“I don't think Jane would let you leave.” Noah laughs.

“True,” you sigh. “it's nice not to come home to an empty house.”

“Our childhoods were so messed up,” he replies softly.

“It's like the gift that never stops giving. But hey, who cares. I have you two and my parents monthly deposits-and FAFSA!” You laugh, because what else could you do, wallow in self deprecating angst like Noah? You weren't sure you could beat him at his own game. “As far as I'm concerned, you're my family now. . .both of you.”

“When did you become a walking talking greeting card?”

“Asshole.”

Noah laughs.

It's a sound you love. For so long, it had been so rare. It warms you up, blots out all the horrible shit you've gone through and makes everything okay.

You fall asleep smiling.

Sasha settles in your ikea bland table with her bag full of notebooks and textbooks. “I wish I had my own place.”

Next week was finals.

Next week was going to kick your ass.

Matthew looks up from his calculus solutions manual for the first time in an hour, “it really depends on the roommates, mine eat all my snacks.”

“Hide them in your room,” you suggest, opening your computer up to the study guide the TA had sent out last week. “With your underwear or something.”

Jane giggles as she watches spongebob on the TV. Fourth graders had it easy. The upcoming winter break meant Jane was practically doing arts and crafts all week.

You open up a notebook to a fresh page as you write down all the key items from the study guide, underlining key items. You wanted to knock the art essays out of the park. It wasn't as easy to bullshit those as it was to make up themes for an english paper.

Fuck, you were already pretty much done with a semester at college.

Jane had almost been back for over a year.

“Can I see your midterm,” Sasha asks, “I want to see what comments you got.”

You fish it out from your binder. “Go for it.”

Matthew looks up from his pages worth of calculus, “I hate math. I should've just done an anthropology major.”

“Sucks to be an overachiever,” you snark, annotating your notes with a pink gel pen. You had never cared to study much in high school, but a major you actually cared for made all the difference in the world. You wanted museums and van goghs and the asmr of cleaning paintings like in youtube videos.

“I didn't think double majoring would be like this,” Matthew sighs. “I haven't slept in three years.”

Sasha shakes her head, “just go for the one you like the most.”

“So I can be unemployed with tons of student debt?”

“Or get that grant money,” you wiggle your eyebrows. It was what your parents were up to.

“That would mean a PhD,” he complains, but doesn't look completely turned off by the idea. “And I could put off figuring my life out for another four years. . .”

Sasha laughs, flipping through flash cards with a bunch of arrows and equations written on them. Physics.

Intro to Biology was so much easier. You practically only had to remember high school biology and read through the study guide a few times. You could remember the difference between eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells.

Sasha suggests ordering Pizza hut as Jane starts asking for food and you feel like yeah, a study break sounds good.

“Four hours is the max people can concentrate for,” Matthew says, as he eats a third slice of pizza.

“So we're done for the day,” Sasha asks, getting up to stretch, and joining Jane on the couch. She'd been an angel, sort of, content to just watch tv all afternoon as you studied. Sure, she'd raised the volumes to movie theater standards every half an hour, but other than that-an angel.

“If you're good for the day.” You were nervous. You didn't want to be a C student anymore. You wanted to try. Surely you had inherited some of your parents brain cells.

“I am,” Sasha admits. “I've been studying every day for four hours. My brain has melted.”

“Honestly,” Matthew says, “I just started studying. The semester seemed so long.”

“Same though bro,” You grin. “All the tests and quizzes went right out of my mind as soon as I was done.”

Sasha shakes her head. “Well, I'm taking a slice for the road. See you around.” She leaves.

Jane joins you and Matthew at the table, licking the pizza grease off her fingers. “I like Noah's pizza better.”

You wince. A cook you were not. “Well, he's working.”

“I know.”

“Noah?” Matthew says, clearly a question.

“My brother,” Jane says flippantly. “They sleep together.”

You're face burns; you want the earth to swallow you whole right then and there. “We live together,” you explain to Matthew who looks more confused. “Jane go watch TV.”

She sends an annoyed look at you, before running off.

“Noah's her brother. They're family friends-” you explain lamely.

“You don't have to explain anything to me,” Matthew says sweetly. “It's your business.”

“Yeah,” you push your hair behind your ears, feeling out of whack. Matthew was cute, but it wasn't like you wanted to jump his bones. He made sociology bearable. “Can you look over my paper? I'm still not sure I got the sources incorporated right-”

“Yeah. Sure. I didn't know sociology 101 would include writing research papers.”

“Everything was going good until I remembered we had that paper due,” Matthew agrees.

You study for another hour, mostly giving each other feedback on your research paper. “It would've helped if he'd given us examples,” you mutter.

“Right.”

Jane tugs on your arm. “Come play with me,” ignoring your classmate entirely.

“Yeah. Sure,” you smile tiredly. You were at your study limit. “Want to call it a night,” you ask Matthew who nods and grabs his things.

Jane scrutinizes him the entire time. She puts her hands on top of the empty pizza box.

“I don't like him,” she pouts, “He's boring. Who studies?”

“Boring college students,” you laugh. “He's fine. We have sociology together. We're also taking english literature pre 1800s together next semester. It was that or latin literature which sounds really pretentious.”

Jane giggles. “Let's play uno!”

“Okay, but just one game. You still have to take a shower before bed.”

“I don't want to take a shower,” Jane protests, “I want to be a horrible reeking troll! Rawr!” She chases you around the living room.

You burst out laughing, letting her tackle you to the floor. It was easy to forget how stressed out you were about finals when you had Jane.

You take deep breaths as you scramble to find your sneakers. It got cold in lecture halls.

Noah makes coffee, “you're going to do fine.”

“I'm going to fail and flunk out of university and my parents are going to hate me forever and i'll never get a job and take Jane to disney world,” you groan, slumping at the counter with a hand on your forehead. You should've studied all night. Why had you bothered going to sleep?

Noah pours you a tumbler full of coffee, with the hazelnut creamer that basically turned the coffee into a hot chocolate, “you've been studying all week. You might not be Lucas levels of 110% on a rest but you're going to do great. I know it,” he says with a genuine smile.

You blush. “I hope all the studying has worked. I've never tried this hard in school.”

“Yeah,” Noah nods with a soft smile. “High school sucked.”

“It did.” You take a sip of your coffee, hoping to steady your nerves.

He looks good in the morning light, before it's too hot to exist. Winter in florida meant temperatures in the low 70s, laughably temperate. Noah's wearing the same boxers he'd gone to sleep in, with a soft worn in grey t-shirt, and a serious case of bed head as his hair curls around his ears in the most adorable mop top.

If you didn't have finals to head to, this would be the perfect morning.

“You're going to do amazing sweetie,” Noah chuckles in the dickish way of his.

You snort, shaking your head. “Fuck yeah I will.”

“That's the spirit.”

You shove your feet into your beat up vans, grab your backpack. “See you later,” you smile at Noah.

“Yeah, good luck,” he says, putting his mug of coffee down on the counter and leaning down. One second he's smiling down at you, and in the next one he's pressing his lips against yours.

Holy fuck.

Your eyes widen.

Was this really happening, or were you just that tired.

“Shit,” Noah stammers, pulling away quickly. “I-”

You raise a brow, “What-”

“It was an accident. Sorry.” Noah steps back, running a hand through his hair, pink up to the tips of his ears.

You feel a bit like a deflated balloon. “What even was that?” Because what it seemed like was like he'd kissed you but-how do you accidentally kiss someone. No-this was way too much for you to dea with at the moment.

“I just-nothing. Just forget it,” Noah says. “I'm going back to sleep.”

“See you later,” you try, feeling all messed up. Had he wanted to kiss you? Was this you messing up for the both of you?

You wish you could call Lily right now, but you had a final to get to.

It's Christmas day, technically.

Jane's been asleep for hours and Noah's taking a bite out of the cookies laid out for Santa as you watch it's a wonderful life trying to puzzle out how this was a Christmas classic. It was boring.

Things had been so awkward with Noah as of late, as you both danced around the kiss, that you had let Jane talk you into a sleepover in her room almost every night. There was no way you could lay there next to Noah and not think yourself to death. Absolutely no way.

You had wrapped up her gifts in baby yoda christmas themed wrapping paper: an assortment of more clothes because Jane really didn't have much considering she had basically popped into life a year ago, random books you remembered liking in elementary and middle school, and toys that you had definitely splurged on including a two hundred dollar set of legos that you looked forward to building with her. It had been hard to keep it secret from her when you all spent the majority of your time together. Stacey had sent a big care package for all of you. Lily had sent gifts through the post office. Lucas’ contribution was a few amazon packages.

All your friends had sent something.

It was touching, considering the distance. You couldn't wait to see them again-Ava wanted to visit in the summer.

You flip the channel, deciding Full House reruns were better.

“Not Full House,” Noah groans, turning the kitchen light off.

“Let me guess. You're a Die Hard fan?”

“Best christmas movie,” he grins.

You shake your head. He could be such a guy. And just like that, the tension between you two dissipates. “No way. The Grinch is the best. The 2001 one anyway.”

You click the side table lamp off.

Noah sits down next to you as you flick through the channels, trying to find something to watch. “Bob's burgers?”

“Sounds good.”

It's dark. The volume’s on low. You're all curled up in bed, and Noah's not being weird-it helps that you're trying to be chill about it.

“How did your finals go?”

“Well I didn't flunk out,” you shrug. “I got a C in sociology but a B in everything else.” It was fine. It's not like you were a sociology major.

“I told you you'd do good.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, laying down entirely, ignoring the tv. “I just figured all the studying would...I don't know, mean I'd get straight As?”

“It's college-isn't it supposed to be like super hard or whatever,” Noah says with a shrug.

“I guess.” You just wished you were that kind of student. Even seeing how hard the effort was on Lucas’ mental health, maybe your parents might visit if you did get straight As. It was dumb. “I just figured my parents might pay attention if I did get all As.”

“Fuck your parents,” he says easily.

You snort. “Shut up. They pay like half the rent.”

“The least they could do.”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “Did you ever want to go to college? You know like when we had to write colleges letters in fifth grade, or was it sixth?”

“Naw. School was never my thing,” Noah says in the quiet of the night.

You smile softly, tilting your head so you're looking at him, the moonlight illuminating the angles of his jaw as it poured in through the windows. “Then it was always culinary school for you?”

He shrugs. “Yeah-I mean,” he closes his eyes, thinking silently. “I'm a little too dumb for school. I could never get the whole trig thing or what Shakespeare was saying let alone the subtext.”

You sit up. “Shut up,” you state, slapping his bicep lightly. “Don't say that shit.”

“It's true.”

You shift, closer to his side of the bed, closer to him still lying there staring up at the ceiling, not meeting your searching gaze. “You're not dumb. Noah-you are not dumb. You're so fucking smart-who remembered to buy toilet paper and figured out how to rent an apartment?”

“You can google that shit,” he says, covering his face with his hand, embarrassed.

“And cooking takes skill. Maybe it's not mensa harvard type smarts, but it's not nothing!” You just wanted him to see himself the way you did. You're sitting up on your knees now, as his expressive wide eyes meet yours, a dark romantic brown you could drown in, staring down at him. “Say it! Say you're smart and clever and amazing!”

“I'm not saying that,” he laughs off.

“Say, I'm fucking smart and I can do anything,” you repeat, nudging his chest.

Noah smiles and it does all sorts of things to you, makes your pulse race as heat winds its way all hot under your skin, all hot and bothered and feeling giddy like a dumbass and you never meet someone who felt like home the way it is with Noah. “I'm fucking smart,” he says quietly, rolling his eyes, “and I can do anything.”

“We're going to have to work on that,” you laugh, belatedly realizing you're almost on top of him. Well, you are on top of him, you're knees are by his waist, but you're leaning over him and fuck you want him. The way he's laying there under you, looking like the sun shines out of your ass, it's thrilling.

“We will,” Noah says, wiggling his brows in a way that has you laughing into his chest.

Then you're looking up at him, unable to catch your breath, because you can't stop laughing and it's not like you're particularly comedic but-fuck it, you lean up and kiss him. It's what you've been itching to do since the party at-fuck, you don't even remember, but you remember finding him there and realizing he's what you had been missing, the reason you didn't feel like being there until you sat by the pool with him.

He's Noah and you're you and there's not a version of you that doesn't love him to bits; there's not a version of you that doesn't go with him to face the monster and rescue Dan and would give your life for him and Jane. Always. Because he's Noah-

You lean down and kiss him, trying to communicate the depth of this feeling.

It wasn't some crush.

Or some drunken affair at a house party.

You kiss his lips with a dizzying fever that burns hot under your skin as desire builds in the pit of your stomach: a bundle of nerves sparking to life. And he kisses you back, his hand cupping your cheek. His thumb rubbing circles into your skin.

You tremble under his gentle touch, afraid that this too would disappear in your hands. You were so used to losing: to getting nothing.

Noah stares up wide eyed at you when you pull away.

You bite your bottom lip.

“I-,” he stutters.

“I've really been wanting to do that for a long time,” you confess.

“Me too.”

You swallow thickly at his confession. “Then it wasn't...it wasn't an accident,” you ask carefully.

Noah shakes his head once. “No. That-I just, I didn't want to mess up something good just because I wanted something more.” He looks so heartbroken in that second-

“Noah,” you sigh gently. “I was surprised and thinking about school but I've-I would've kissed you then if my head hadn't been so far up my own ass.”

He snorts, the line of his shoulders relaxing under your hands. “After what happened- I was lucky that you even wanted to talk to me at all. I didn't think you'd want anything to do with me and then I thought it was just for Jane,” Noah admits painfully.

“I've always loved you.” You tell him. “And I'm going to keep telling you until it gets through that thick skull of yours.”

Noah chuckles.

“So are we on the same page?”

He rakishly raises a brow with a shit eating grin on his lips, “I don't know, are you gonna kiss me again?”

You vow to wipe that look off his face as you do more than press your lips hungrily against his, your hands against his chest as you shift once more, situating yourself and getting comfortable straddling his waist with your legs. You press hard kisses to his mouth as Noah kisses you back with the same fervor; you nibble on his bottom lip, bringing it between your teeth.

It's an exercise in breathlessness, a mexican stand-off in which both sides are ready and happy to pull the trigger because of the rush of blood to your head as you taste him on your lips. It's intoxicating the way in which he kisses your mouth and you forget the need to breathe.

But you, smiling against the skin of his jaw as you catch your breath. His chest rises and falls under your hands as he laughs giddily, feeling as crazy as you do.

It's not that epic romeo and juliet love that burns and destroys, but the fullness in your heart as you lay there with him.

You plant kisses down his jaw, savoring the hitches in his breath as you nip on the skin at the crook of his neck. “Is this okay,” you ask wickedly.

“Fuck,” Noah utters, voice breaking as he sucks in air. “Yeah-”

He cups your cheek with his hand and leads you up, brings you back where he can kiss you again. Noah kisses you-he lets himself kiss you. His tongue experimentally whetting against your all too willing lips before your mouth opens up to him and it's clear in the clumsy way he's eager to explore your mouth--the boy has no idea what he's doing.

It's fine.

You smile against his mouth, taking charge and running your tongue against his. Reaching for his free hand and guiding it, inviting him to explore the shape of your body in an oversized t-shirt and tiny booty shorts that you wouldn't even take the trash out in.

Noah does, clasping your hips with his hand as you binch up the fabric of his shirt in your hands as you lose yourself in kissing him, in drinking him in like a comfort series you could endlessly rewatch.

You're both breathless, as you lay your head down on his chest, content.

“That was,” Noah says all out of sorts, “wow.”

“Guess you're going to be the next great american writer,” you tease.

He rolls his eyes, running his hand up your side.

“Hey,” you continue, relaxing into his touch, “Hemingway was a man of few words.”

“Was he the alcoholic one?”

“I think a lot of writers were,” you admit. “I tried to read his whale book but it was boring as fuck.”

“Moby Dick,” Noah says thoughtfully, “did Hemingway write Moby Dick?”

“Who cares,” you reply, pressing a kiss against the edge of his lips, fine with spending the wee hours of the morning making out with Noah.

“Well now I want to know.”

“Really,” you tease, bringing your hand up, running your fingers through his soft hair.

His eyes close. Noah leans into your touch. “I'll google it later.”

You giggle.

Then he’s kissing you again and you could care less about books and long dead writers. Noah captures your lips with his and you intertwine your fingers in his hair, a hand on his chest, wondering what it would feel like to have his bare skin against yours and caught between the enormity of your want and letting things happen naturally. It was Noah. You didn’t want to rush him.

You were still amazed he’d kissed you back,that he wanted you the same way you wanted him. The love had never been the point of contention between you two. You loved him at nine and you loved him at nineteen.

Noah losses some of his hesitation, his hands sliding down your side until they reach the swell of your hips straddling his waist. Then his hand slips under the fabric of your shirt and you moan into his mouth at the sensation of his fingers splayed against to taunt muscles of your abdomen.

It’s just flaring want consuming you whole.

“Is that,” Noah manages between bated breaths, “okay?”

You kind of want to shake his shoulders and say shut up and keep going, because you might just combust in the next few minutes if he keeps going like this, this clumsy tenderness mixed with the assault of his body discovering yours. “Yeah,” you stammer out, more feeling than young woman. “Great actually.”

Noah chuckles, trailing kisses down your neck as you lean back a little, before pulling away. . .before pulling your shirt over your head.

He sucks in a breath at the sight of your naked torso.

You can’t help the headyness in your chest at his reaction, at the way you were affecting him. “Like what you see,” you grin, all brash confidence that threatened to topple over like a house of cards at every turn, at the shift of his body under yours.

For once, Noah doesn’t have some smartass comment, just reaches his hands to your cheeks and pulls you down flush against him.

Fuck.

You kiss him feverishly, your hands finding the hem of his shirt as running yours fingers against the sliver of skin.

Noah moans into your mouth and you swear you can’t even function at the sound. The entire world is boiled down to you and him, him and you, and building pressure in your belly that threatens to explode.

“The shirt-,” you stutter out, half out of your mind.

“Yeah,” he obliges, sitting up and tugging it off.

And then you’re melting against him, the warmth of his skin against yours. Your breasts flush against his bare chest. Your toes curl up as you sigh, hands clutching at his neck, at his cheek, at the ends of his hair.

You kiss his jaw, you suck on the skin of his jaw and none of it is enough. Fuck, you want him so bad. You’re so fucking horny. It’s not like you’d been with a lot of people. But it had been over a year since your last sexual encounter.

And that might explain part of it-

Noah cups one of your breast with the palm of his hand, and fuck-

Your mind blanks as you moan his name. “Noah,” you whimper.

He kisses your collarbone, smiling against your skin.

“Do you want to-,” he asks, sounding more self assured by the word.

“Yes, yes,” you eagerly answer, kissing him hungrily. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Noah laughs breathlessly.

Then he’s whimpering as you run your fingers under the waistband of his boxers.

His hand closes around your wrist before you can get further, “condom?”

“Fuck,” you swear. This was so unsexy of you both. But it wasn’t like you had a reason to buy condoms along with pads and fruit snacks. “I think I have one,” you vaguely remember there being one in your wallet.

“I really hope you do.”

“Jerk.”

With great reluctance, you crawl off him to go look for your purse. You had to stop throwing it wherever and hang it up. It would've made it easier to find right now.

You don’t look back at Noah, even though you can feel his heavy gaze on you. The airs filled with static electricity as you rifle around and find the slim black bag.

It’s another few minutes of fishing through its contents before you find the thin small envelope that you were pretty sure you’d gotten in health or at planned parenthood at some point. Ava had definitely been there.

When you turn around, Noah’s sat up in bed, in your bed, in the bed you two share, have shared for months. It’s too dark to make out the expression on his features from this distance, but it’s under his dark eyes that you make your way back to him.

You push your shorts and underwear down in one go, discarding them by the side of the bed, taking care not to lose the condom (you were going on another target run asap) before you’re once again straddling his waist, feeling Noah already hard under your thigh.

“I’ve,” he starts as you sit up on your knees, feeling incredibly vulnerable. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Oh.” You’re off kilter. Does he not want to? It’s fine. You’re just surprised. It’s Noah. He’s tall and funny even if you want to strangle him half the time --he can cook-- and he’s so fucking hot when he’s not being adorkable. You’re surprised. “We don’t. . .have to.”

He sits up under you. “No. It’s,” Noah blushes, “I want to, it’s just-you should know?”

“Oh. Okay,” you lean in, kissing him with a tenderness he deserves in spades, “if you’re sure.”

Noah grasps your hips in his hands, pulling you in, “I’m sure.”

He kisses you.

You push him down onto the bed by his shoulders. His eyes are full of trust as he looks up at you, full of love like the moon on a clear night. You carefully open the condom up.

Noah shimmies his boxers off.

And because you’re you, you reach down and stroke his cock with your hand.

He shuts his eyes, moaning your name as he throws his head back into the bed, his back arching.

You wait a moment for him to still underneath you, before you roll the condom onto his cock, letting your desire carry your through as you fumble a bit. Again, you didn’t exactly have much experience on Noah. You just had some experience.

You lean down flush against him, kissing his lips, as you guide his cock to the apex of your thighs and part your legs, moaning into his mouth as he enters your soaked entrance. Noah stretches you out, leaving you a trembling mess, faring no better than he currently was under you, as his hips thrust against you and you-fuck!

It’s a tangle of limbs as you wrap your arms around him, lacing your fingers behind his neck, wanting more, and more as your hips more erratically against his.

Noah is all kisses and moans and his fingers bruising the skin of your hips as he presses you closer against him.

You don’t really know or care about anything but the feel of his cock inside you, as he thrusts with fervor, and clutches you near. You just want and want and stars dance across your eyelids as your skin catches fire, the heat in your belly finally boiling over as you fuck him, grinding your hips against his.

You splutter, reaching your climax while topping the boy you’ve been in love with for what might as well be your whole life. It’s just your strained voice, repeating his name, “Noah,” like it’s an answer to the whole meaning of life bullshit.

Good.

Bad.

It always comes back to him.

Noah.

He comes against you a second later, your name a sharp breath on his lips, before he goes as boneless as you feel. You’re on cloud fucking nine.

It’s a feeling no amount of weed can come close to.

Exhausted, you get off of him, slumping into a puddle on the bed. Fucking Florida. You were too hot and sweaty to curl under the blankets now.

“I fucking love you.”

“Oh,” you snipe back, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, “now that I’ve fucked you you tell me.”

“Shut up,” Noah manages. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go toss the condom.”

He sits up slowly, “oh this episode’s my favorite.”

You’d completely forgotten about Bob’s Burgers reruns playing on the TV.

It’s New Year’s Eve and the three of you are eating ice cream on the beach. Only in Florida.

“And why can’t I go in the water?”

“Because you don’t have your bathing suit,” Noah tells Jane for the hundredth time.

“I promise I’ll just stick my feet in.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” you shake your head.

She frowns. “I promise!”

What the heck. It’s not like you were going anywhere else after this. “Okay. But you have to finish your ice cream first.”

“Wow,” Noah says, throwing his arm around your shoulder and leaning his weight against you, making you stumble in the sand. “What a pushover.”

“Me!” You reply, offended. “You let her stay home for no reason.”

The twins exchange glances. “She had chickenpox,” Noah shrugs shamelessly.

“And I’m the Queen of England.”

“Korean skincare does miracles.”

You roll your eyes at him, “shut up.”

Jane giggles easily as she decides this patch of sand is the one, and sits down, licking her rocky road ice cream happily.

“Jane,” you ask gently.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember why you’re ten and we’re not?” It had been bugging you, ever since the parent teacher conference. There had been no more nightmares since September, but it bothered you, that she might remember anything. That Jane might not want to tell you. You couldn’t help her if she didn’t tell you.

She shrugs. “Not really,” with a child’s ability to shrug things off.

Noah asks the question you’ve been dreading. “Do you remember Redfield?”

Jane looks at you both, frowning. “Who?”

Your shoulders sag with relief. You hide it with a bite of your ice cream cone. Jane had a habit of picking up on things.

“No one important,” Noah brushes off, running a hand through his hair.

“You guys are being weird,” Jane complains. “Is this about you two being gross together? I saw you holding hands.” She narrows her eyes at you accusingly. “Don’t you remember boys have cooties.” She shakes her head. “Grown ups.”

“Jane,” Noah squeaks.

You laugh, covering your mouth with the back of your hand. “Yeah. We thought you should know.” It was better to leave the whole Redfield business behind. She didn’t need that shit weighing her down. “I don’t know. I like your brother a lot for some reason. Ava says it’s trauma induced codependency but she’s Ava so. . .”

Jane frowns again, letting the ice cream drip onto the sand as she thinks. “Does that mean I’m getting a sister?”

It’s your turn to be flabbergasted, as your skin reddens into a ripe tomato. “What!”

“It’s only fair,” she explains. “If you get my brother then I should get a new sister.”

“How about a stuffed animal,” you barter.

“You let me play five Nights at Freddies?”

“No way Jane,” Noah says, shaking his head. “It’ll give you nightmares.”

“What about minecraft,” you try. “Just on Fridays though.”

“Okay. i don’t want my ice cream anymore. I want to go play in the water.”

You nod, kicking your shoes off. “Okay yeah. Let’s go throw it away. I’m sick of mine too.”

You toss the ice cream and race Jane into the waves.

#noah marshall #ilitw noah #noah x mc #it lives in the woods #jane marshall #mine #theyre like 18/19 theyre not lasting long during sex #but also i love mc and noah having shit parents and then turning around and being much better parents #to jane #ABUSE DOES NOT DEFINE YOU #okay but also mc and noah being soulmates and being that couple thats known each other their whole lives #i love

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